TuS Makkabi players celebrate their victory in the 2023 Berlin State Cup. Photo: TuS Makkabi

A Jewish club is set to make soccer history in Germany on Sunday, when its players will face off against one of the country’s leading sides in the first round of the DFB Cup, the German Football Association’s prestigious knockout competition.

TuS Makkabi — a Berlin sports club destroyed during the Nazi era and then revived in 1970 — will play against VfL Wolfsburg of the Bundesliga, a team that last won the DFB Cup in 2015 and which finished in 12th place in Germany’s top league in the 2022 season.

Makkabi automatically qualified for a place in the national competition after winning the Berlin State Cup in June with a 3-1 victory over rivals Sparta Lichtenberg. Sunday’s match has been eagerly anticipated in both Germany and Israel, with the contest scheduled to be broadcast live on Israeli TV.

Michael Koblenz, the club’s sporting director, told broadcaster RBB 24 that qualifying for the DFB Cup had resulted in “huge joy.”

“Grown men cried,” he recalled, adding that the club was still trying to digest “what this means for us, not only historically but also organizationally.”

Makkabi’s history goes back to 1898, when it was founded under the name “Bar Kochba” — a tribute to the Jewish military leader who led an uprising against Roman rule in ancient Israel during the second century. By the 1920s, its membership had grown to more than 40,000. However, the onset of the Nazi dictatorship a decade later resulted in the club being completely shuttered in 1938 as the Nazis launched their campaign of mass extermination of Jews under their rule.

Koblenz credited the club’s revival to survivors of the Holocaust who returned to Germany after World War II. Its reappearance had also been a sign “that we are confident again,” he said.

Marian Wajselfisz, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor who helped to relaunch the club, said that he would be attending Sunday’s game in Wolfsburg. Wajselfisz — who spent two years as a child hiding in a basement from the Nazis — remarked that “a Jewish club playing against a Bundesliga side is unique.” Holding out hope that soccer’s unpredictable nature will favor Makkabi, he added, “you never know how it will end.”

While Makkabi is a multi-ethnic club with only two Jewish players among representatives of 14 nations on its roster, the club still respects its Jewish origins and identity. Koblenz pointed out that no pork would be served at the pre-match meal on Sunday. “We are a Jewish association,” he said, although “that doesn’t mean we see ourselves as a religious association.”

Koblenz noted that media interest in the club in recent years had largely revolved around complaints of antisemitism at matches, with one incident involving its youth team last year garnering particular attention.

“In the past we were only contacted by the media when there were antisemitic incidents,” Koblenz said. “Now for the first time we have the opportunity to comment on a positive topic.”

These days, Makkabi is home to 550 members who compete in basketball, chess, gymnastics and table tennis alongside soccer. As well as its main men’s soccer team, the club also operates nine youth teams.