The German Football Museum will publish an online encyclopedia on Jewish players and officials who were persecuted during the Nazi era.
Titled “Never Forget”, the encyclopedia pays tribute to those who played an important role on German football culture before the Nazi party came to power in 1933.
The encyclopedia will go online on Thursday, the International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
It was created in co-operation with the network of German football museums and club archives.
So far 23 clubs and groups from Germany are involved and 200 biographies are available, including that of national team player Julius Hirsch who was killed in the Auschwitz death camp.
“The National Socialists not only wiped out lives, but also memories. The portraits of Jews who were successful in sport were removed from collector’s albums, their names scratched from commemorative plaques, their faces retouched from club photos and their achievements removed from record lists,” museum director Manuel Neukirchner said.
“With the online encyclopedia, we draw attention to the fate of ostracized and murdered Jewish sports pioneers who once gave an important impetus to football in Germany. It is also our ambition to send a permanent signal against any anti-Semitic and racist tendency in football today.”
