Dutch football fans beat Jew and chant song praising Nazis
Man complained to police that he was pushed around, kicked and verbally assaulted after 50 supporters in the Hague were heard singing about Jews 'burning the best'
A Jewish organisation has written to the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) after a Jewish man was assaulted by revellers who sang about gassing Jews.
The victim, identified in the Dutch media only as Joram, claimed he was kicked and subjected to antisemitic hate speech by a group of about 50 men on the Netherlands’ national holiday of liberation from the Nazis.
The men were wearing football shirts of the Feyenoord club of Rotterdam. The club’s rival is Amsterdam’s Ajax team, which is widely associated with Jews.
“The Dutch Football Association is unable to control Feyenoord’s reputation sinking further, as their fans continue the hate-fest,” wrote Dr. Shimon Samuels from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in a letter to the UEFA, urging the organisation to take action against the club.
Joram, 35, asked men celebrating in a park near the Dutch parliament building to stop singing the offensive song, whose lyrics include: “My father was in the commandos, my mother was in the SS, together they burned Jews ’cause Jews burn the best.”
The chanters pushed Joram around as police stood idly by, he told the AD news site and the Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, or CIDI.
The chant, whose use was first reported by the media in 2015, has proliferated in the Netherlands and Belgium in recent years. In some cases, fans chant it to taunt counterparts from rival teams.
Hidde van Koningsveld, the head of the pro-Israel CiJo group, last week told the Dutch media he experiences an antisemitic incident at least once a week in the Hague, where he works, because he wears a kippah.
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