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Soccer-Fans Lay Wreaths at Dachau to Commemorate Nazi Victims

Soccer Football – Euro 2024 – Germany stages ‘Football and Remembrance’ program – Dachau concentration camp, Dachau, Germany – June 15, 2024 A bagpipe player with Scotland fans during the ceremony. Photo: REUTERS/Angelika Warmuth

Fans from Scotland, Ukraine, Germany, Israel and other nations laid wreaths at the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site on Saturday to commemorate victims of the Nazis, vowing “never again” and to use football as a force to unite people.

The group toured the camp and heard how the Nazis had persecuted Jewish footballers and coaches, forced prisoners to play soccer for propaganda before banning it, then allowed only some inmates to play under the camp’s hierarchy of privileges for different categories of prisoner.

Fans also heard the children of former camp victims tell their parents’ stories, walked in procession with a Scottish bagpiper.

Dachau is half an hour’s drive from Munich’s football stadium, where Euro 2024 began on Friday. It was one of the first concentration camps to be set up by the Nazis, weeks after Adolf Hitler took power in January, 1933.

“It is a somber place. You walk in and it is an uncomfortable feeling. But I think this sort of service is important to remember what happened, to make sure we learn from mistakes… it has opened our minds to a lot of things,” said Cole Cattanach, 21, a Scottish student from Falkirk, travelling through Germany to support the Scotland team.

Andreas Erbel, representing German football fans, said he came to the commemoration to help protect democracy.

“I wanted to show that there is also a counterweight to the move to the right across Europe, that there are more people… who are open to the world.”

“During Euro 2024 many people will come to us in Germany and it is a chance for us to live out this togetherness.”

In the 12 years before its liberation by American soldiers in 1945, over 200,000 people were imprisoned at Dachau, among them the Jewish president of Bayern Munich soccer club Kurt Landauer. At least 41,500 died at in the camp and its satellite sites.

Saturday’s event comes amid Germany’s nationwide “Football and Remembrance” program for Euro 2024, looking at how the Nazis murdered athletes and used soccer for their own ends, with tours at historical sites close to the host cities.

FOOTBALL AT DACHAU

The Nazi SS guards had photos taken in 1933 showing prisoners playing football at Dachau, most likely to try and deceive the outside world that inmates were well treated.

Football was then banned at the camp until 1943, when the Nazis needed to use the fittest prisoners for munitions manufacturing, and so allowed the sport as a perk. However, Jewish prisoners, at the very bottom in the Nazi’s racist hierarchy of prisoners, were excluded.

The football pitch on sandy ground was by the camp’s roll call square.

“What we know from survivor accounts is that you could always notice the smell of burning bodies in the air, you saw the perimeter fence, and the emaciated prisoners. These were football games under extreme conditions,” said Maximilian Luetgens, a historian at Dachau who is leading the historical tours.

On display is a wooden football trophy, carved in 1944 by a prisoner for a tournament between teams of inmates. It was won by a group of political prisoners from Luxembourg.

Visitors can also see a poster designed by prisoners, showing two players, framed by barbed wire and with the triangle badges worn by inmates from Poland, the Czech Republic and Luxembourg.

“This work is so important, because there is unfortunately an increase in racism in European football, and there are racist, antisemitic and homophobic chants,” said Luetgens.

Bernd Neuendorf, President of Germany’s Football Association wrote in an introduction to the Football and Remembrance program, “People from all continents will come to us to peacefully celebrate and support their teams… Nevertheless, we also want to use this tournament to remember the dark sides of German history and reflect for a moment.”

The post Soccer-Fans Lay Wreaths at Dachau to Commemorate Nazi Victims first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Treasure Trove: How a Polish-Jewish artist told Canadians about the horrors of Nazi Germany and produced beautiful illustrations

Arthur Szyk (1894-1951) was a Polish-Jewish artist whose work reflected the historic times he lived: the two world wars, the rise of totalitarianism in Europe and the birth of the State of Israel. In 1940, with the support of the British government and the Polish government-in-exile, he visited Canada to popularize the struggle against Nazism. […]

The post Treasure Trove: How a Polish-Jewish artist told Canadians about the horrors of Nazi Germany and produced beautiful illustrations appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.

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Biden hits Fundraising Trail in Show of Strength after Dismal Debate Performance

FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S., June 28, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz/File Photo

President Joe Biden embarks on a series of fundraising events across two states on Saturday as he works to stamp out a crisis of confidence in his re-election campaign following a feeble debate performance that dismayed his fellow Democrats.

Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will visit the upscale New York beach enclave known as the Hamptons for a campaign fundraiser hosted by hedge-fund billionaire Barry Rosentein. Later in the day, he will travel to New Jersey for a fundraiser hosted by wealthy New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, a Democrat.

Fellow hedge-fund founder Eric Mindich and his Tony Award-winning producer wife Stacey, celebrity couple Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, and actor Michael J. Fox are all listed as members of the host committee at the New York event, according to an invitation seen by Reuters.

Biden told a rally in North Carolina on Friday he intended to defeat Republican rival Donald Trump in the November presidential election, giving no sign he would heed calls from Democrats who want him to drop out of the race.

Biden‘s verbal stumbles and occasionally meandering responses during Thursday night’s debate heightened voter concerns that the 81-year-old might not be fit to serve another four-year term.

The Biden campaign on Saturday boasted it had raised more than $27 million between debate day through Friday evening, but questions remain about whether the debate performance will hurt fundraising, at least in the short term.

The post Biden hits Fundraising Trail in Show of Strength after Dismal Debate Performance first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Arab League Rescinds the Classification of Hezbollah as a Terrorist Group

Mourners carry a coffin during the funeral of Wissam Tawil, a commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces who according to Lebanese security sources was killed during an Israeli strike on south Lebanon, in Khirbet Selm, Lebanon, Jan. 9, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Aziz Taher

i24 NewsThe Arab League no longer defines Hezbollah as a proscribed terrorist group, an official said on Saturday.

Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based Shiite militia and a proxy of the Islamic regime in Iran, boasts the world’s largest rocket arsenal of any non-state actor. It is animated by the antisemitic ideology of jihad and is committed to the destruction of Israel.

“In earlier Arab League decisions, Hezbollah was designated as a terrorist organization, and this designation was reflected in the resolutions,” Hossam Zaki, the assistant secretary-general of the Arab League, was quoted in Arab media as saying.

“The League’s member states concurred that the labeling of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization should no longer be employed,” Zaki said, adding that the regional body “does not maintain terrorist lists and does not actively seek to designate entities in such a manner.”

Hezbollah has unleashed numerous rockets, mortars and drones on northern Israel in the past eight months starting on October 8, a day after the Jewish state suffered the worst antisemitic massacre since the Holocaust at the hands of the Palestinian jihadists of Hamas.

The post Arab League Rescinds the Classification of Hezbollah as a Terrorist Group first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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