Football – fight against anti-Semitism: BVB’s other offensive

The reputation was ruined. In 2012, fans of Borussia Dortmund expressed their solidarity with the “National Resistance Dortmund”, a banned right-wing extremist organization, on a stadium banner. The club has been accused of tolerating neo-Nazis among its fans and security staff. In 2013, two Dortmund fan representatives were attacked by right-wing extremist hooligans at a game in Donetsk. On a political level, BVB was considered ignorant and naive.

Eleven years later, the club has managed to transform itself. This Wednesday, Hans-Joachim Watzke, the managing director of Borussia Dortmund, will receive the Leo Baeck Prize, the highest award from the Central Council of Jews. The outgoing BVB boss has played a major role in the club’s realignment in the fight against anti-Semitism in recent years. At the award ceremony in Berlin, Hendrik Wüst, the Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, will give the laudatory speech. “Hans-Joachim Watzke has been committed to our open society with full conviction for many years,” says a statement from the Central Council of Jews. “Under his leadership, the Borussia Dortmund club has become an important partner in the prevention of anti-Semitism.”

Watzke represents the commitment of a club that is rare in European football: After years of public criticism, BVB sought advice from external scientists in 2012 and founded a “right-wing extremism working group”. Starting in 2014, the club offered its fans and employees educational trips to concentration camp memorials; there are now at least three per year, and the waiting lists to take part are long.

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“Football fans have a high level of identification with their club and their city,” says Daniel Lörcher, one of the key BVB employees in the prevention of anti-Semitism. »This identification provides an introduction to our projects. In Dortmund we look at the traces of Jewish life, anti-Semitic persecution and the structures of National Socialism. And then it’s also about the question: What does this have to do with me today?”

Thanks to the popularity of football, BVB also reaches many interested people who would not otherwise take advantage of political education offers. In the projects they also present biographies of people who were victims of anti-Semitism. An example: The former BVB groundskeeper and resistance fighter Heinrich Czerkus was murdered by the Nazis in 1945.

In 2019, Borussia Dortmund donated one million euros to expand the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem. The club also supported other memorials with smaller amounts. For initiatives like this, Hans-Joachim Watzke received the Josef Neuberger Medal from the Jewish community in Düsseldorf two years ago, named after the former Justice Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia. “It is important that we work to promote proud Jewish life in Germany,” says Watzke at the honor. »And we won’t let up. I give you my word for that.”

The thematic anchoring meant that BVB was able to react quickly even after the Hamas attack on Israel: with commemorative messages in the stadium and workshops about the Middle East conflict for fans and employees. The club and fans invited relatives of Hamas victims and hostages to Dortmund on several occasions. “As an Israeli fan with German roots, this means a lot to me,” says Adam Lahav from the “Israeli Borussians,” a fan club that primarily has members in Israel and Germany. “Many people in Israel can now identify with BVB.”

But there are also voices in the international fan scene that accuse Borussia Dortmund of taking a one-sided position in favor of Israel. A number of them took to social media to praise Celtic Glasgow fans who displayed Palestinian flags at their Champions League game in Dortmund just over a month ago. In this charged atmosphere, BVB sometimes only promotes its events about anti-Semitism internally in order to avoid interference from outside.

Club employee Daniel Lörcher says that prevention usually takes place away from the general public. After October 7th, he and his colleagues approached the Jewish community in Dortmund. “We said: We are at your side,” Lörcher remembers. “These are people from our city who have to justify themselves for something they have nothing to do with and because of anti-Semitic hostility.”

Hans-Joachim Watzke is now the second football official to receive the prestigious Leo Baeck Prize, alongside former DFB President Theo Zwanziger. It is unlikely that the south stand in the Dortmund stadium is now free of right-wing extremists. But at least BVB is now taking the offensive.