The Italian football federation (FICG) has said a passage from Anne Frank’s diary will be read before matches this week in response to acts of antisemitism by Lazio fans and to keep alive memories of the Holocaust.
The FIGC also says a minute of silence will be observed before Serie A, B and C matches this week, plus amateur and youth games over the weekend.
During Sunday’s league game against Cagliari Lazio fans defaced their Stadio Olimpico home in Rome with antisemitic grafitti and stickers showing images of Frank, the young diarist who died in the Holocaust, wearing a jersey of their city rivals Roma.
Lazio’s president, Claudio Lotito, has visited Rome’s main synagogue and promised a new antisemitism education campaign. Lotito said the club would be intensifying their efforts to combat racism and antisemitism and announced Lazio would organise an annual trip to the Auschwitz concentration camp with 200 young fans to “educate them not to forget”.
Lazio fans have a history of racist and antisemitic behaviour, including a Lazio banner in the city derby nearly 20 years ago aimed at Roma supporters that read: “Auschwitz Is Your Homeland; The Ovens Are Your Homes.”
The head of the European Parliament has also denounced Lazio fans’ behaviour. Antonio Tajani, who is also Italian, told the European Parliament in Strasbourg that “using the image of Anne Frank as an insult against others is a very grave matter”.
The Italian prime minister, Paolo Gentiloni, said the stickers were “unbelievable, unacceptable and to not be minimised”.
The Anne Frank diary passage reads: “I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquillity will return once more.”
