ROME - Lazio supporters found to have produced anti-Semitic stickers for the Lazio-Cagliari game earlier this week have been identified. These men were caught pasting images of Anne Frank wearing a Roma jersey onto a glass window by CCTV cameras, and there are said to be 15 men recognised in this tape. Among the men identified, two of them are minors, and one is 13 years old. Several members of the group are said to have extreme-right sympathies, and their defence to the police, was that the action was "a prank, a joke between boys to take around Rome," as reported by Il Messagero. 

 The President of Lazio, Claudio Lotito, along with players Wallace Fortuna Dos Santos and Felipe Anderson, went on Tuesday to the main synagogue of Rome to lay a wreath in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, and to pay his respects to the Jewish community following the incident at the stadium. He announced that "with this gesture, we intend to reiterate our position, clear and indefinable: Lazio has always repressed certain phenomena, with initiatives in schools. Today we intend to promote one day each year to bring 200 boys to Auschwitz." This initiative has been seen as inadequate by the head Rabbi of Rome, Riccardo Di Segni, in resolving the sorrow and distress that has been caused by the actions of the Lazio fans.

 A spokesperson for the Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam has released a statement in which the grief caused by the Lazio fans' anti-Semitic attitude is made clear: “we are shocked by these anti-Jewish expressions, which are extremely painful to those who have experienced the consequences of the Jewish persecution.” They have also welcomed the response by the Lazio club since the anti-Semitic messages were found: “we are pleased to see that others, including Italian football clubs, have expressed their indignation about this action.”

hl