German soccer team refuses to acknowledge fans over anti-Semitic, racist chants

Third-division Chemnitzer Football Club gives supporters cold shoulder after they chant that club director was a ‘Jewish pig’

By Marcy Oster 26 August 2019, 2:48 am

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Illustrative: Bayern's Mats Hummels, left, challenges for the ball against Chemnitz' Tom Scheffel, right, during the German soccer cup match between Chemnitzer FC and and FC Bayern Munich in Chemnitz, eastern Germany on August 12, 2017. (AP/Jens Meyer)

JTA — A German soccer team has called out its fans for anti-Semitic and racist comment during a game.

The members of the third-division Chemnitzer Football Club refused to acknowledge its traveling fans as is customary at the end of a match against Bayern Munich’s second team on Saturday after the racist and anti-Semitic chants were heard during the second half of the game, the German Deutsch-Welle news service reported.

Fans called the club’s sporting director Thomas Sobotzik a “Jewish pig” and chanted “at least Daniel Frahn is not a negro.” Sobotzik fired Frahn, the team captain, earlier this month after he repeatedly showed support for the far-right fans.

The fans’ chants “cannot have any acceptance in our society,” the team said in a statement, and threatened legal action against the fans.

The team has been in a running battle with its right-wing fans for several months. During a match in March, fans held a moment of silence and displayed a banner in honor of Thomas Haller, a local far-right leader and former head of the club’s security firm.

The city of Chemnitz, in Saxony, eastern Germany, is home to a well-established neo-Nazi network, which was known to have connections with the far-right terrorist organization National Socialist Underground, according to Deutsch-Welle.