Never forget, never again
Friday, June 23rd, 2006“THERE are 3.8million tickets for the World Cup,” said England fan Mark Perryman, “and twice that number of people were murdered in the space of six years.”
As statistics go, it’s as good a way as any to try to come to terms with the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis during the Second World War. It was, without question, the darkest period of German history. Those horrors were remembered at a moving ceremony on Friday as around 150 football fans from England, Germany and Poland came together for a visit to the Dachau concentration camp.
The beautiful town of Dachau, just to the north of Munich, is known almost exclusively for the atrocities committed at Germany’s first concentration camp, built on the outskirts in 1933. Initially a political camp as Hitler established his dictatorship, it soon expanded to take in religious prisoners, mainly Jews, and then internationals after the war began in 1939. By the time it ended in 1945, 42,000 people had died there.
Perryman, an active figure in the supporters’ group London Englandfans, got the idea for arranging a supporters’ visit to Dachau after visiting Auschwitz during a trip to Katowice to watch England play Poland in 1997.
He said: “I couldn’t see any other England fans at Auschwitz; in fact the only other England fans I’d met who had been there were neo-Nazis who were joking about the pictures they had managed to get in the gas chambers. I knew they didn’t represent typical England fans, but it still made me very depressed. A few years later, we played in Poland again, and talked to Polish fan groups about a joint visit, and they were very keen to do that.”
Perryman then got German fan groups from Dortmund, Hamburg and Munich on board to set up the visit to Dachau. It was a chilling experience, right from the moment we entered the gates to the camp, which contain the motto ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ – ‘Work brings freedom’.
Wigan Athletic fan Mark Perry (above left) was one of the fans on the trip, and thinks it will have helped bring English and German supporters closer together. “We sat down with German fans the other night and we talked about things like this,” he said. “They talked about their embarrassment about it, and we talked about our embarrassment when it comes to hooligans. But they’re making an effort, and we’re making an effort, and it makes a difference.
“My friend John’s girlfriend is German, and she said to him: ‘You don’t want to go. It’ll change your life.’ But this is the kind of thing you’ve got to make up your own mind about.”
As for John himself – John Burke, from Skelmersdale (above right) – he said: “This is a part of history. It’s not linked to football, but it’s part of history, and seeing as it’s still here, you should come and see it.”
There is very little left of the original camp; as the barracks in which prisoners were kept were burned down by the Allies after the war. Their outlines are marked by neat rectangular patches of gravel, each with the number of the hut that once stood there (pictured above). A replica of a hut has been built at the far end of the site; and the cramped wooden beds inside give some idea of the horrible conditions prisoners were kept in.
That horror was truly brought home when we were introduced to Max Mannheimer, a short, sprightly 86-year-old Jewish man with a shock of white hair. Mannheimer was a prisoner at both Auschwitz and Dachau, and survived. The story he told of his experiences was relentless and horrific. Of course, the story itself was horrible enough – he lost six family members, including his parents and his wife, to the Nazis, he was tortured, and his jobs at the concentration camps included transporting corpses to the mortuary. What really brought home the tragedy of Mannheimer’s story were the details: he remembered every date and every name, everything emblazoned on his mind like a years-long film that plays on a loop.
If Mannheimer brought home the human cost of inhumanity, so did the parts of the camp which survived the end of the war. Martin Berliner, chief executive of the Jewish charity Maccabi GB – a co-organiser of the trip – found himself boiling over at the sight of the gas chambers (pictured above).
“I’ve just been into the extermination rooms and it fills me with anger,” Berliner said. “Otherwise, I found parts of the camp quite sterile, but every Jew has a story. My father lost his parents in the Holocaust and suffered all his life for it. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t stop and think: ‘My God, how could any human do this to another human?’”
The Polish group ‘The Never Again Association’ also had a role to play in organising the trip, part of a key role in their drive to stamp out anti-Semitism in their own country.
Jacek Purski, a member of the organisation, said: “The growing wave of anti-Semitism and neo-fascist organisations is a great danger, and that’s why this visit is important. It’s something that proves fans can stand together, regardless of nationality, and say no to racism.”
That’s vital at a World Cup which has the slogan ‘A Time To Make Friends’. Purski added: “I’m also at this World Cup as part of the Football Against Racism in Europe campaign. We’re doing anti-racist monitoring: I’ve seen some racist incidents, but they were very small, and I think generally it’s been a peaceful World Cup.”
The visit concluded with the laying of wreaths by England, German and Polish fans, as well as by Maccabi GB, and a sense that this small group of supporters had done something very important. Fascism and sport cannot always be separated as easily as we would like – the protests against Iran’s Holocaust-denying president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad at his country’s World Cup games in Nuremberg and Frankfurt showed that – but the supporters in Dachau showed it can be confronted.
“It’s been a very strong emotional experience,” said Hubert Schroger, from Munich. “It’s a moving thing to have supporters of different nationalities doing things togather.”
Perryman added: “This place was a factory of death – an industrialisation of murder. What the fans are doing here is making the connection to the idea that you must never forget a place such as this, because by remembering you can help prevent it happening again. It’s a case of ‘never forget, but never again’.”
