Where today thousands surge into the stadium where FC St. Pauli plays home matches, begins the story of Selig Cahn. Cahn was born on 3 August in the Hamburg district of St. Pauli. His family lived on Marktstrasse, in the Karolinenviertel area, bordering on Heiligengeistfeld. Selig Cahn grew up in a very orthodox Jewish family and had two older siblings, Bertha and Siegmund. After school, he worked in his father’s wholesaling business.

From early on, football played an important role in his life. In August 1912, he changed from the football club Allemannia to the football division of the Hamburg-St. Pauli gymnastics association. One year later, the club’s newspaper mentioned the eighteen-year-old third division winger for the first time.

World War I had a major impact on Selig Cahn’s life. He was drafted, wounded on the Western Front, and returned to Hamburg. Despite his injuries and the ongoing war, Cahn continued to play for his club. Cahn and striker Max Kulik, another Jewish German player, formed an intimidating line of attack. During these years, he was often on the pitch with players who would later become presidents of FC St. Pauli, including Hans Friedrichsen and Wilhelm Koch. As “club führer,” Koch headed the club during the Nazi era; in 1937 he became a member of the Nazi Party. Until the end of the 1990s, today’s Millerntor Stadium carried his name.

When World War I ended, Selig Cahn stayed true to football. In 1921, his name still crops up in Hamburg’s sports reporting. He witnessed the split from the gymnastics club’s football division in 1924, when his club officially became FC St. Pauli. He’s in a photo of the 1925 Old Men’s team. And his name is listed among the club’s members in an anniversary booklet from 1930.

Around this time, Cahn also started a family. On 1 August 1928 in Kalingrad, he married Jeannette Gütkin from Klaipėda, seven years his junior. One year later, their daughter Bertha was born, their son Meno joined the family in 1932.

When the Nazis seized power in 1933, life changed dramatically for Jewish athletes. If Selig Cahn was still a member of FC St. Pauli in 1934, he was expelled after over twenty years in the club. Afterwards, perhaps he played for Schild, the Jewish sports association whose pitch was on the Kollaustraße – exactly the same spot where FC St. Pauli trains today. In December 1934, his name appears in Schild’s Old Men’s line-up.

During the November Pogrom in 1938, Selig Cahn, along with thousands more Jewish men, was deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After his release in December, he returned to Hamburg. Whether or not he subsequently tried to flee the country is unknown.

On 11 July 1942, the Cahn family was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was the first train from Hamburg to the extermination camp. Among those deported were also Selig Cahn’s brother Siegmund and his wife. Selig Cahn, his wife Jeannette, and their two children were most likely murdered directly upon arrival. Bertha was 13 years old, Meno was only 10. Jeannette was 43, and Selig not yet 50 years old.

The family’s last possessions were publicly auctioned in August 1942. Often it was neighbours or people from the immediate area who profited from such auctions.

Unlike Nazi Party member Wilhelm Koch, for many years no one commemorated Selig Cahn – neither the city nor his former club FC St. Pauli. Only recently are we able to tell his story, thanks to new historical research. Today, Stolpersteine or stumbling stones have been laid for Selig Cahn and his family. But behind many names in old team line-ups and lists of club member from the years before 1933, more as yet untold life stories may still be hidden.