“Hate the Jews for life”
The Berlin Football Association is investigating the club boss
2/7/2023 6:14 p.m
A serious anti-Semitic incident occurred at a youth game last November. As a result, two youth players are banned for a long time, the club chairman makes a shocking statement in an ARD documentary. The case now has further consequences.
At the A youth game between Hertha 06 and the German-Jewish club TuS Makkabi there was an anti-Semitic scandal in Berlin last November: one player is said to have shown the guests the Hitler salute, another, according to the referee’s report, “I’ll burn you, like the Germans did.” Two youth players will be banned for two years as a result, and the club will be fined 1,500 euros. But the incident could have further consequences for Hertha 06 – and above all for its chairman Ergün Cakir.
After the game, Cakir said in an ARD documentary broadcast at the end of January: “My son will hate the Jews for the rest of his life”. The club boss’s son is one of the suspended youngsters. Cakir’s failure didn’t end there: “If you want to talk to someone, there is no one you can sit down with and talk to, but they say from the start: We are Jews, we have the right, we can do anything, what we want,” said the official of the Berlin Oberliga team. “What disappoints me about the Germans is that they play along.”
“Completely unacceptable”
In response to the statements, the Berlin Football Association has now initiated proceedings under sports law against Cakir: “From the point of view of the Berlin Football Association, the statements made by Ergün Cakir are completely unacceptable and not compatible with the values enshrined in the statutes. The initiation of a sports court proceedings at the request of the presidency is therefore the logical consequence,” said association president Bernd Schultz. In a conversation with the association, Cakir asked for an apology “for the behavior of the sanctioned players and admitted to mistakes in his statements,” according to a statement.
Cakir had explained to the German Press Agency that his son’s hatred of Jews came from the punishment. He wanted a different punishment than a game ban. At his first sports court appointment, Cakir apologized to the members of Makkabi who were present, as did his son, said the official, who now has to appear before the sports court again.
Such apologies were not received by Makkabi board member Michael Koblenz and other representatives. Koblenz had a club representative say that he no longer wanted to have anything to do with the chairman of Hertha 06 due to several incidents with various teams.
Further consequences threaten
According to a report by Berlin’s “BZ”, the club is also threatened with further sanctions: “We are already in talks with the Senate administration and are examining the club’s eligibility for sports funding,” said Heike Schmitt-Schmelz, sports councilor for the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf district, where Hertha 06 is based is. As a consequence, the club could face the loss of their venue. “The club must distance itself from these statements,” demanded Schmitt-Schmelz. So far, however, there has been no reaction at all. “That shocks me almost more than the statements.”
The Berlin Football Association assured: “The BFV perceives anti-Semitism on the Berlin football fields as a serious problem, which the association has been counteracting for years with various measures.” In the course of the upcoming sports court proceedings, it will now also be checked whether CFC Hertha 06 is ready to take sustainable steps to combat anti-Semitism, said BFV boss Schulz.