Anne Frank’s diary will be read aloud at all soccer matches in Italy this week, the Italian football federation announced yesterday, after shocking displays of anti-Semitism by fans of the Rome club Lazio.
Lazio supporters on Sunday littered the Stadio Olimpico in Rome with images of Anne Frank — the young diarist who died in the Holocaust — wearing a jersey of city rival Roma. The ultra right-wing fans of Lazio associate their Roma counterparts with being left-wing and Jewish, and had hoped to incite Roma fans, since the teams share the same stadium.
Stadium cleaners found the anti-Semitic stickers and police have opened a criminal inquiry into the case.
The Anne Frank diary passage reading will be combined with a minute of silence observed before Serie A, B and C matches in Italy this week, plus amateur and youth games over the weekend, to promote Holocaust remembrance, the football federation said.
Racism has been widespread for years in many Italian and European stadiums — targeting players and fans — and measures such as banning fans and forcing teams to play behind closed doors have not solved the problem.
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