Chelsea Soccer Club To Take Anti-Semitic Chanters On Tour Auschwitz
Chelsea soccer club Image by Getty Images
(JTA) — Chelsea, the British soccer club, is planning to send fans who are caught chanting anti-Semitic songs on a tour of the former death camp of Auschwitz instead of punishing them.
The team’s owner, Roman Abramovich, who is Jewish, has spearheaded a new initiative to combat anti-Semitism, according to the report about he plan in The Sun Thursday.
The tours will replace the team’s current policy of issuing stadium bans to offenders, according to the report, which said the Auschwitz trips would be “educational.” Fans who do not wish to go to Auschwitz will face season bans or longer penalties, according to the plan.
The new initiative is designed to combat the prevalent phenomenon of anti-Semitism in soccer chants, especially when Chelsea faces off with Tottenham Hotspur, a north London group widely associated with the Jewish People.
Many Hot Spurs fans refer to themselves proudly as “yids.” Supporters of rival teams taunt them with anti-Semitic chants, including about the Holocaust in what experts of anti-Semitism say is a major arena of banalization of the Holocaust and mainstreaming of anti-Semitic hate speech.
Several other soccer teams throughout Europe are associated with Jews, none more than Amsterdam’s Ajax, whose fans take to flying Israeli flags at matches. Rival team supporters often chants about Hamas, the SS and gassing Jews.
“If you just ban people, you will never change their behavior,” The Sun quoted Chelsea chairman Bruce Buck as saying. “This policy gives them the chance to realize what they have done, to make them want to behave better.”
Chelsea is so committed to the project they will cover all costs.
The idea has been backed by the World Jewish Congress, the Holocaust Education Trust and leading Jewish scholar Rabbi Barry Marcus, who said: “Banning doesn’t work.”
Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
