Second visit to Auschwitz for FC Bayern fans

"We're concerned by the most recent incidents of racism. There's only one thing FC Bayern has for racism: the red card!", Karl-Heinz Rummenigge said at the FC Bayern München eV Annual General meeting at Munich's Olympic Hall on 15 November 2019.

A clear stance against any form of racism is one of the core tasks of FC Bayern's fan liaison work and that of German pro football as a whole, according to the FC Bayern München AG chairman. Under the slogan "Never again", the Bundesliga commemorates the victims of National Socialism every year around 27 January, the date on which the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was liberated. This year marks the 75-year anniversary of the liberation.

Staff of the socio-pedagogical Munich fan project and the FC Bayern fan liaison department took part in a workshop called "Historio-political education in fan liaison work" in Terezín, the former Theresienstadt ghetto. The workshop was organised by the German Football League (DFL). "Never again" is a call for all people to support democracy and human rights.

Two years after the first visit for FC Bayern supporters, a second group of Bayern fans travelled to Auschwitz in the context of the project Erinnerung vereint [Remembrance unites]. The Munich fan project coordinates the initiative, the German Football League's (DFL) PFiFF funding programme supports it financially.

Renowned institutions such as the National Socialism Documentation Center, the Church of Reconciliation at Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, the Jewish Museum and the FC Bayern Erlebniswelt have again supported the project, this time under the slogan "Against discrimination – in the signs of the times".

Alongside staff of the Munich fan project, FC Bayern München (fan and fan club liaison) and the National Socialism Documentation Center (for scientific processing), 15 Bayern fans set off for Oświęcim on Friday. The five-day memorial visit programme includes visits to Kraków (with the former Jewish district Kazimierz and the Podgorze ghetto), the Jewish centre in Oświęcim, the Auschwitz I memorial site and the former extermination camp Auschwitz II Birkenau.

Fan and fan club liaison officer Raimond Aumann is taking part in the visit for the second time after 2018 and will lay a wreath at the ‘Death Wall’ (in the yard between blocks 10 and 11) on behalf of FC Bayern München.

"FC Bayern resolutely opposes forgetting the crimes during National Socialism and condemns all current forms of racism," said Aumann: "It is our social responsibility to actively continue the remembrance and anti-discrimination efforts and, in the context of a second memorial visit project with Bayern fans, return to the place where over a million people were murdered by the Nazis."

The group will return to Munich this coming Tuesday.