They were some of the ugliest scenes observed in Australian sport for years.
Three Sydney United fans were charged for making Nazi salutes at October’s Australia Cup soccer final, while nearby another fan flew the Ustasha flag – the emblem of the murderous World War II regime of the Nazi-puppet state of Croatia.
The salutes at the match led to condemnation including that of commentator and former Socceroo and Craig Foster, who described it as “the most abhorrent thing that we’ve seen at a football match for a very long time”.
Last week, there was an important step in making amends.
Representatives of the Jewish community and Sydney United – a storied football club created by Croatian migrants in 1958 – met on Monday at the Sydney Jewish Museum.
Their meeting came days after a recent investigation by The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, which uncovered how major sporting and cultural clubs in Australia’s large Croatian community openly celebrate fascist anniversaries while displaying emblems, flags and maps of the Ustasha regime.
In response to those stories, Croatia’s ambassador to Australia, Betty Pavelich, said there was no place for the “glorification of totalitarian regimes, extremism or intolerance”.
The investigation has since been translated and reproduced or referenced in at least 10 news sites in Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia.
Read the article by Ben Schneiders and Simone Fox Koob in the Brisbane Times.