80 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the DFL and professional clubs are focussing on the voices of Holocaust survivors.
“…that Auschwitz will never happen again!”
80 years ago, on 27 January 1945, the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp was liberated. German football has been marking this event for more than 20 years and most recently commemorated the people persecuted, deported and murdered by the National Socialists on matchdays around 27 January 2025.
Over one million people were murdered in Auschwitz. The site therefore symbolises the Holocaust, the genocide of European Jews by Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The date of the liberation is also the symbolic beginning of the end of the Holocaust. It enabled the persecuted people to survive – not symbolically, but in reality.
Only a few contemporary witnesses are still able to talk about their experiences. On the 80th anniversary, it was therefore particularly important to us to listen to the survivors’ accounts and pass them on.
Surviving after Auschwitz meant much more than simply emerging with your life. It meant the loss of one’s home, the difficult search for relatives and friends and mourning for all those lost. All too often, it meant a decades-long undignified struggle for recognition and financial compensation. It meant overcoming trauma and creating a new life for yourself after your old one was destroyed beyond repair, finding a new home, starting over for yourself and the next generations.
Appreciation for life after
Now, 80 years on, we would like to remember and honour all the new things that the survivors have made possible and created at the same time as remembering. Families were founded, communities were rebuilt – and finally, the state of Israel was created as a democratic homeland for the Jewish people. Today, only around 200,000 of those who survived the Holocaust are still alive worldwide, half of them in Israel. They not only leave behind their memories, but they have also helped to shape our present and our future.
This includes keeping the memory alive. The survivors campaigned for a memorial to be built on the site at Auschwitz. Current memorials around the world are largely thanks to the many years of work by survivors and their relatives, even in the face of resistance.
An active culture of remembrance began in German football at the turn of the millennium. Today, remembrance work is carried out in a variety of ways by clubs and associations, by fans and fan projects, also with the support of the !Nie Wieder initiative.
BUNDESLIGA
The DFL magazine
What does remembrance work have to do with football, 80 years after the liberation of Auschwitz? The focus topic in issue 1|25 of BUNDESLIGA deals with this and other questions in detail. Click here for the e-paper. (available in German)
Never again means forever
It is clear to us that active remembrance does not only mean remembering the victims, looking back and reflecting. It also requires a constant confrontation with current anti-Semitism and racism today. It requires daily commitment to our democracy and to a society free from hate speech and oppression. And it means showing solidarity with Jews, even and especially when this requires courage and taking a stand. This is even more urgent in view of the increasing antisemitic incidents around the world since the terrorist attack by Hamas on 7 October 2023.
German football is aware of its resonance and the associated responsibility and, after 80 years, is more determined than ever to pass on the message of the survivors of the Auschwitz concentration camp of ‘Never again!’
Never again means now and forever.
