As World Cup opens in Germany, authorities focus on tackling racism

by Toby Axelrod
JTA

Berlin is bedecked in soccer balls. Atop telephone booths, decorating the TV tower, overshadowing the famous Brandenburg Gate, the familiar ball has just about taken over as Germany hosts this year’s World Cup of soccer.

For the first time in decades, Germany is hosting an international sports event. But the month-long event, which began June 9, is much more than fun and games.

“Sport is always political,” says Daniel Wildmann, deputy director of the Leo Baeck Institute in London. “This doesn’t mean it is bad or good. It is part of society, and we have to take it into consideration.”

Germany sees the games, which conclude July 9, as a chance to prove to three million visitors that it can host a major event without incident. But in order to do so it must tame the racism that is a part of soccer culture and that plagues contemporary German society, even though it is rejected by the mainstream.

In the run-up to the games, the German news media have been full of talk about anti-Semitism and xenophobia among some soccer fans, dire warnings to visitors to avoid “foreigner-free” zones in former East Germany, and arguments over whether Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should be allowed to attend the games and be arrested on charges of Holocaust denial — a crime in Germany — if he shows up. Neo-Nazis plan to show their solidarity with Ahmadinejad by welcoming the Iranian team when it plays in Leipzig on June 21.

All the above — not to mention fears of terrorism — certainly are chilling.

The way Germany handles such matters is “a kind of mirror of how society functions,” said Raphael Gross, director of the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt. The treatment of Jews and other minorities “is like a litmus test of the society, and that is also true for the championship.”

But even as the world of soccer becomes more global, with players from Africa competing for top European soccer teams, eradicating racism has proven difficult.

Most racism is directed against Africans, but in Holland, Dutch fans — especially opponents of Amsterdam’s Ajax club, which is identified in the public mind with Jews — often shout things like, “Hamas, Hamas, hang the Jews in the gas.”

Germany is no different. About a week before the tournament, a newsmagazine show on the RTL television network focused on hooliganism in Germany’s lower-level soccer leagues. With a hidden camera, the program’s editor, Burkhard Kress, filmed fans in the former East German city of Magdeburg singing the “Auschwitz song” — “We are building a U-bahn train, we are building a U-bahn, from Magdeburg to Auschwitz.”

Soccer fans in other German cities also sing the tune, substituting the name of their city for Magdeburg.

“The clubs and the soccer associations have to acknowledge the problem, because most of the time they are saying it is not as bad as it was before,” said Martin Endemann of Football Against Racism in Europe.

The World Cup motto — A Time to Make Friends — is meant to boost Germany’s public image, Franz Beckenbauer, president of the World Cup organizing committee, recently told reporters.

But making friends will take place under strict scrutiny, said German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schauble.

A National Cooperation and Information Center will oversee security around the clock; a number of the 32 participating nations are supplying some 500 liaison officers to help German police nab foreign troublemakers.

Because of Germany’s Nazi past, the problem has drawn special attention here, but while observers say Germany’s top leagues have succeeded in reducing racism and anti-Semitism among fans, some of the secondary leagues have not tackled the problem.

German soccer history was often marked by tolerance and openness, said Daniela Eisenstein, director of the Jewish Museum of Furth. While German gymnastics clubs were historically closed to Jews, soccer — championed here by Walther Bensemann, son of a Berlin Jewish banker — was an open sport until the Nazi period, she said.

Bensemann, who organized the first international soccer game, between Germany and France, between the wars, “believed in the power of soccer to bring people together,” Eisenstein said, “and I think he would be an optimist today.”

She said she believes attitudes are changing among German soccer clubs and fans, “and the positive ideals of soccer definitely outweigh these other aspects.”

But just in case, during the quarter-finals teams will carry banners against discrimination, and team captains will read statements against racism and xenophobia before kickoff, Schauble said.

What will happen after everyone goes home? Racism and xenophobia at the tournament is not the sole issue, Endemann said: “The problem is that people go out on the street and beat up Jewish people and blacks and Asians.”

Sports is not just “some kind of island where everyone can meet” and party, Wildmann said. “As long as you don’t look back in anger, as long as you don’t have a critical look at your past, you will stick to this idea of the island.”