Forgotten heroes of sport
Football Museum commemorates Holocaust victims
1/27/2022 3:53 p.m
The end of National Socialist rule may have been more than 70 years ago, but the fight against anti-Semitism and racism is still necessary and omnipresent in Germany. The DFB football museum is therefore presenting a special project on the memorial day for the victims of the Holocaust.
The German Football Museum commemorated the victims of the Holocaust with a special campaign. For the international day of remembrance, the institution of the German Football Association (DFB) published under the title “Never forget” an online encyclopedia of persecuted Jewish footballers. The work deals with the life stories of more than 200 Jewish players and officials who shaped German football up to the time of National Socialism.
Among others, Bayern Munich, Schalke 04 and Eintracht Frankfurt participated with their club archives in the compilation. “The National Socialists not only wiped out lives, but also memories,” said museum director Manuel Neukirchner. “The likenesses of athletically successful Jews were removed from scrapbooks, their names scratched off commemorative plaques, their faces retouched from club photos and their achievements removed from record lists.”
The concept for the online encyclopedia also states: “Even after 1945, an appreciation of the great importance of Jewish footballers for the development of football in Germany was completely forgotten for a long time.” For the first time, these achievements would be “presented and conveyed in a contemporary and multimedia way”, combined with the clear goal that “football remains diverse, cosmopolitan and tolerant”.
“Against any anti-Semitic and racist tendency”
With the lexicon, the museum wants to “call attention to the fate of ostracized and murdered Jewish sports pioneers who once gave important impetus to football in Germany. It is also our concern to send a permanent signal against any anti-Semitic and racist tendency in football today,” he stated. Among other things, the work contains the biography of the seven-time national player Julius Hirsch, who was murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Many first, second and third division teams also commemorated the victims of the Holocaust with the message “Never again”. “There were victims, followers and perpetrators – also at FC Bayern,” said Munich CEO Oliver Kahn: “We all have to keep our history alive. We have an obligation to future generations and victims to ensure that there are no followers and perpetrators will give more.”
Numerous clubs have also been dealing with their own past for years. It was often individuals who gave the impetus. At Borussia Dortmund, for example, it was also possible to reduce the influence of right-wing extremist fans in this way. The club now organizes trips to memorial sites, among other things. At FC Bayern, it was the ultra group Schickeria that kept reminding us of the Jewish club president Kurt Landauer, who was named honorary president in 2013 more than five decades after his death, also because of this sustained initiative.