Herbert Hainer: ‘Remembering must not become routine’

A Shabbat service, synagogue and city tours through Munich exploring the Nazi era, as well as plenty of time for socialising was part of the plan as FC Bayern organised a weekend around International Holocaust Memorial Day together with the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria (IKGM) in the spirit of remembrance culture, as it did last year.

Over 320 club members had registered to attend, with a total of around 100 drawn by lot, as well as Bayern employees and members of the IKGM community. “Remembrance has nothing to do with guilt, but with responsibility, which we all share in an open society – some less, and FC Bayern more so,” said IKGM president Charlotte Knobloch, who once again took on the patronage together with Bayern president Herbert Hainer. “Remembering must not become a routine,” Hainer explained in his speech. “Remembering means discussing, exchanging ideas, learning from different points of view, getting involved, and sometimes even confronting resistance.”

Hainer: “Encourage people, come together, stand together”

A sports club like FC Bayern is “an active, dynamic, vibrant community. We want to move people, also beyond the pitch,” said Hainer to the guests, who included the Israeli Consul General for Southern Germany, Talya Lador-Fresher, Bayern vice-chairman Michael Diederich and supervisory board member Werner Zedelius. “We want to create space, encourage people to come together and stand together.” For Bayern’s Red against Racism campaign, the theme for 2024 is ‘Encounters’. He continued: “We want to regularly bring people from different cultures and walks of life together to help break down barriers and promote mutual understanding.”

Remembrance should “not be limited to grand gestures on a few days – FC Bayern and its fans have understood that,” said Knobloch, adding that the joint events with the Bundesliga champions “have already become a good tradition. I would therefore like to thank the club at all levels - from the club management to the fans to the Red against Racism initiative. Anyone who comes to the Allianz Arena understands how individual voices join together to form a loud choir, and what works in football. We also need that on the social stage against all hatred, against all extremism.”

Guided tours by the FC Bayern Museum

On Friday, Knobloch had declared: “My home of Munich would be incomplete without FC Bayern, and my life would be poorer without the great moments that this club has given me.” This was the IKGM president's lead-in to the city tours on Sunday, which were organised by the FC Bayern Museum as part of the !NieWieder (Never Again) campaign. Three groups of 20 members each followed the journey of FC Bayern during the Nazi era, followed by lunch at the Pastalozzi restaurant, where there was an opportunity to exchange ideas before the weekend ended with a joint visit to the FC Bayern basketball team's 98-81 win over Crailsheim.

Hainer gave the participants the following message to take home: “Let's not just stay in dialogue, but also take it out into the world, and let's face all the challenges that our society is facing together.” Right now is “the time to look out for each other, and sport is like life. We can only achieve things together,” said the president. “The demonstration last Sunday in Munich and the demonstrations in Germany over the past few days are encouraging. It's about the many-voiced, diverse society that enriches us all.”

You can find further information about the Red against Racism campaign here: