Anne Frank passage to be read before matches

ROME, Italy — The Italian soccer federation says a passage from Anne Frank’s diary will be read before matches this week to condemn the acts of anti-Semitism by fans of the Lazio soccer team and to keep alive memories of the Holocaust.

The FIGC also says a minute of silence will be observed before Serie A, B and C matches this week, plus amateur and youth games over the weekend.

Lazio fans earlier this week littered the Stadio Olimpico with images of Frank — the young diarist who died in the Holocaust — wearing a jersey of city rival Roma.

The diary passage reads: “I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.”

Anne Frank, at age 12, at her school desk in Amsterdam, 1941. (Courtesy, Beyond the Story)

— AP