FC Bayern remembers victims of the Holocaust

The outer wall of the Stadion an der Grünwalder Straße, which was once FC Bayern’s home ground, is to become a place of remembrance. Every evening from 9pm until Sunday, 9 May, projections of photos will commemorate a total of 22 German athletes of Jewish origin who were persecuted and, in many cases, murdered after the National Socialists seized power. Part of this campaign by the initiative ‘Faces for the Names’ are also five biographies with ties to Bayern. The images of honorary president Kurt Landauer, former youth official Otto Albert Beer, 1932 championship-winning coach Richard ‘Dombi’ Kohn, and members Heinrich Berliner and Wilhelm Buisson are to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive. Landauer and Kohn survived in exile in Switzerland and the Netherlands. Beer was murdered in the Kauen concentration camp in 1941, Berliner committed suicide in 1940, and Buisson was executed for political reasons in the same year.

President Herbert Hainer: “FC Bayern is a club that has always stood for tolerant, cosmopolitan togetherness. Antisemitism, hatred, violence and exclusion of any kind have no place in our world view or in our society. Initiatives like ‘Faces for the Names’ are important so that we all become aware again and again of the values that are elementary for a free, peaceful and sociable society. Being part of this campaign means a lot to FC Bayern.”

‘Faces for the Names’ makes victims of the Holocaust – their names and their faces – visible to people. For this purpose, their photos are projected onto the outside of the houses in which the victims formerly lived or which stand for their work. The project was launched in Munich last October by the association J.E.W.S. Jews Engaged With Society e.V. following models in Prague and Washington DC.

FC Bayern started its ‘Reds against Racism’ campaign in March 2020: