Jewish leaders slam French, German soccer teams
By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENT
06/17/2012 01:59
German soccer captain, 2 Polish-born players say "missed opportunity" rest of team didn't visit Auschwitz.
Germany's Bierhoff, Lahm, Klose at Auschwitz Photo: REUTERS/POOL New
BERLIN – The president of the umbrella organization of France’s Jewish
communities said it was “shocking” that his country’s soccer team did not visit
Auschwitz like other teams playing in the European championships.
The
French team should have visited the camp “in light of how soccer players serve
as role models for young people,” Dr. Richard Prasquier, president of CRIF,
wrote on the group’s website Tuesday.
Dr. Dieter Graumann, the head of
Germany’s Central Council of Jews, sharply criticized the German Football
Association (DFB) and the national team’s manager Oliver Bierhoff :because a visit to Auschwitz by only some members of the squad made a mockery of the Holocaust.
According to a Catholic news agency report, the Jewish
leader’s outrage was directed at the choice of words by Bierhoff, who called the
Auschwitz visit by just three players from the German squad a “fireside talk.”
The German word he used – kamin – can also mean chimney, and thus the term
suggested the burning of Jews.
At a meeting of the Jewish communities in
Hamburg, Graumann called the Auschwitz visit a “colossal show of tastelessness
and insensitivity.” He had called on the DFB in March to visit Auschwitz because
the European championship would be taking place in Poland, as well as in
Ukraine.
The German captain, Philipp Lahm, and two Polish-born players,
Lukas Podolski and Miroslav Klose, visited the memorial. Graumann called it a
“missed opportunity” and said that if the entire squad had been present, the
team could have reached hundreds of thousands of young people.
The
British, Italian and Dutch teams playing in the Euro 12 tournament visited the
camp.
Prasquier, the French Jewish leader, added that a visit was
necessary because of “the ignorance of many young people” about the Holocaust
despite efforts to educate them.
He noted that the French team was based
at Donetsk in Ukraine, some 850 miles from Auschwitz, while the British and
Italian teams were based in Krakow, much closer to the site. “However, an
airplane would have shortened the trip, he wrote. “The fact that the visit was
apparently not even considered is shocking.”
JTA contributed to this report