After winning the 2024 Tauron Hokej Liga championship Unia Oświęcim was granted a spot in the Champions Hockey League (CHL). The CHL is a competition of the best teams from around Europe, and Polish clubs were returning to the event after being excluded from the tournament in 2024.

Unia Oświęcim started off the event with a 4-3 overtime loss to Liiga club Ilves. Ilves had the second best record in the top Finnish league last year. The strong performance set up a lot of hype for Saturday September 7th as the German champions Eisbären Berlin came to Poland.

Unfortunately before the puck even dropped at Hala Lodowa MOSiR the biggest headline of the game would happen.

Unia Oświęcim fans displayed a large banner reading “Welcome to the city of your biggest crimes. German death camps.” The words German death camp were also filled in with the colors of the German flag. For those that don’t know Oświęcim was the site of the German Nazi-built Auschwitz concentration camp. Over 1.1 million Jews, Poles, Romani, and Soviet prisoners of war were killed at the camp operated by nazi Germany in occupied Poland territory. The camp sits just five kilometers from where Unia Oświęcim plays their home games.

According to sources Unia Oświęcim will be facing a financial punishment for the banner that took up a section of the crowd. We have heard that the CHL is very upset at the banner. The competition has a ban against any items that display political views. The CHL had their social media team in the arena for the game but did not post the banner. They did block Polish podcast Cross-Check IHP on social media for sharing pictures of the banner. This is also not the first time a Polish club has faced discipline from the CHL for a German death camp banner as GKS Tychy was fined during the 2020 event.

Unia Oświęcim would go on to lose the game 4-1 with Swedish forward Hampus Olsson scoring the lone goal for the home team. They play their next CHL game on September 13th versus Red Bull Salzburg. Last year Salzburg won the ICEHL championship, the top league of Austria.

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