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by Ben Cohen
Players from Berlin soccer team TuS Makkabi huddle in the center of the pitch prior to a league game. Photo: Facebook
The vice-president of a Berlin soccer team whose players were disciplined after they proffered Nazi salutes and antisemitic invective towards a rival Jewish team has been subjected to a two-year ban.
The Berlin Football Association (BFV) announced the ban against Ergün Cakir — vice-president of the club CFC Hertha 06 — on Thursday. Cakir will also be required to pay a 1,000 Euro fine.
Players from CFC Hertha 06 assailed their visiting opponents from the German-Jewish club TuS Makkabi Berlin after the match referee blew the final whistle in contest between the two sides on Nov. 13 last year, which Makkabi won 7-4.
In extraordinary scenes that were documented in a special report by the referee, Ender Apaydin, the Makkabi players were threatened with “cremation” — a reference to the Nazi gas chambers — while Apaydin himself was told that he had been “bought by the Jews,” the Berliner Zeitung news outlet reported on Monday.
According to Apaydin, trouble began when the Makkabi players, who are drawn from many nationalities and ethnicities in the Berlin league’s 17-19 age group, attempted take a team photo while standing on the Hertha pitch in front of an Israeli flag. Cakir’s son, who plays for Hertha, approached the group, screaming, “I’ll f*** your country and your flag, you sons of b*****. Take down the flag or I’ll cremate you and your dirty flag, you b******, like the Germans did to you.”
Cakir was interviewed about the incident in a subsequent television documentary about antisemitism in sport.
“My son will hate the Jews for the rest of his life – I know that 100 percent,” he declared.
He then complained that no-one had engaged in a dialogue with his son. “They said from the start, ‘we are Jews, we have the right, we can do anything we want,'” he said.
BFV President Bernd Schultz said that the punitive action against Cakir should “be seen as a clear signal that antisemitism will not be tolerated in the Berlin Football Association and will have clear consequences,” in remarks reported by Sport1 news outlet.
