Pathetic. Ashamed. And unfortunately still visible today in 2024. German police announced on Tuesday that they had opened an investigation after Lazio Rome supporters were seen on Monday evening making Nazi salutes in a Munich beer hall where Adolf Hitler had adopted the program of the Nazi party.
“An operation at the Hofbräuhaus can be confirmed. Due to the ongoing investigation, nothing further can be said at the moment,” Munich police told AFP on Tuesday. “There were already Lazio supporters in Munich yesterday, Monday March 4, in several places in the city and also at the Hofbräuhaus. From 6 p.m. the Munich police were in front of and inside the Hofbräuhaus. This takes place routinely before a football match or a major event,” the brewery told AFP. “If unconstitutional or xenophobic behavior should have taken place, we strongly condemn it,” added those responsible for the brewery.
On amateur videos sent to AFP and recorded around 10:30 p.m. in the brasserie, we see several dozen supporters in Lazio Rome tracksuits in the Hofbräuhaus making Nazi or fascist salutes, their right arms raised and outstretched.
In a video published on the Instagram account of the Italian daily La Repubblica, we also see Lazio supporters singing: “We don’t care about prison, the Black Shirts will triumph. If they do not triumph, it will be a mess with batons and grenades. Duce! Duce! Duce!” The Blackshirts refer to the militia of Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime. “These images are shameful, they tarnish the image of the club, of all its supporters and of Rome,” lamented Alessandro Onorato, the deputy in charge of Sports at Rome town hall, in a press release.
In recent years, Lazio supporters have regularly been singled out for racist or anti-Semitic behavior. In 2017, they notably distinguished themselves by hijacking an image of Anne Frank, a German Jewish teenager who died in the Nazi concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen in Germany, which they displayed wearing the AS Roma jersey. Founded at the end of the 16th century, the Hofbräuhaus is a Munich brewery, where Adolf Hitler presented in February 1920 the 25 points of the program of the Nazi party NSDAP.