Józef Klotz (2 January 1900 – 1941) was a Jewish Polish footballer who played as a forward. He scored the first ever goal for the Poland national team. He was killed by the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1941.
Biography Klotz was born in Kraków, southern Poland, and was Jewish."Poland honors national soccer player murdered in Holocaust" Israel HaYom, 11 June 2019. His father was a shoemaker.
He scored the first ever goal for the Poland national team. He scored it against Sweden in Stockholm in May 1922, in the team's third international match.Radosław Kossakowski, Przemysław Nosal, Wojciech Woźniak (2020). Politics, Ideology and Football Fandom; The Transformation of Modern Poland
Klotz played for two clubs. He played first for Jutrzenka Kraków, which he joined as a youth team player and played for from 1912 to 1925, and then for Makabi Warsaw from 1925 to 1929 (both teams were Jewish minority teams). He retired as a player in 1930.
He was imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940. He was murdered there by the Germans in 1941.
In 2019, Klotz was honored by the Polish Football Association.
See also List of select Jewish football (association; soccer) players
References
Sources Andrzej Gowarzewski "FUJI Football Encyclopedia – History of the Polish National Team (1) – White and Red"; GiA Katowice 1991