‘Banning Them Doesn’t Change Their Behaviour’ – Chelsea To Send Racist Fans On Sobering Tours Of Auschwitz

Chris Wright

11th, October 2018

2 Comments

Embed from Getty Images

Chelsea have devised a plan to send fans found guilty of racist and antisemitic offences to Auschwitz for a sobering history lesson.

The initiative is being supported by Roman Abramovich, who is Jewish himself, and will see banning orders replaced and season ticket confiscation with the option of attending educational courses and even tours around the WWII Nazi death camp museum in Poland.

Speaking to The Sun, club chairman Bruce Buck said:

If you just ban people, you will never change their behaviour. This policy gives them the chance to realise what they have done, to make them want to behave better.

In the past we would take them from the crowd and ban them, for up to three years.

Now we say: ‘You did something wrong. You have the option. We can ban you or you can spend some time with our diversity officers, understanding what you did wrong.’

Chelsea have publicly denounced their own supporters for antisemitic chanting, most notably after a game against Tottenham in September of 2017.

Abramovich’s proposal is radical, sure, but as somebody who has been to Auschwitz and done the tour, if it’s not enough to deepen your capacity for tolerance and empathy on a fundamental level, then there really is no hope.

Posted in Chelsea

Share this article: Email

2 Comments

  1. trt says:

    I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think one visit in a German death camp can change a person who thought that Jews or people of different skin colour are inferior human beings in the first place.

  2. Geraldo says:

    trt – I wish I could disagree with you but unfortunately I can’t, because this article has reminded me of a TV documentary on racism in English football from around the late 90s/ early millennium, during which a sizeable group of Chelsea fans was secretly filmed paying homage to the Nazis on a visit to Dachau concentration camp when the team was in Germany for a pre-season friendly. Given the mindset of such people why should anyone think that this exercise will have any positive effect on the latest group of odious individuals to latch onto Chelsea FC?

Leave a Reply