Paolo di Canio, the Lazio forward who has become the darling of the neo-fascist right with his repeated straight-arm salutes, has been summoned by the mayor of Rome to listen to fellow Italians who survived the Nazi death camps.
An official said the mayor, Walter Veltroni, had asked the entire SS Lazio squad to attend a meeting next Thursday. Asked if he expected Di Canio to turn up, the official said: "He is invited."
The move is part of an initiative by the mayor that has already brought AS Roma players and officials face to face with Holocaust survivors in the city hall. For two hours on Thursday, Francesco Totti and the other members of the Serie A side heard former concentration-camp inmates appeal for them to stop playing as soon as they saw Nazi symbols in the crowd.
Veltroni told the Guardian he had been shocked into doing something after learning that a swastika and two similar symbols had been hung from the terraces of Rome's Olympic stadium during Roma's game against Livorno on Jan. 29. He said: "The word `game' and swastika have no place together."
The mayor said he wanted to give players and officials "a chance to learn of the gravity of what happened directly, in the words of those who endured the hell of the Shoah."
Council officials described how Alberto Sed, a 77-year-old survivor of Auschwitz and lifelong Roma supporter, broke down as he read out a letter he had written to the club as a young man. Sed, who was sent to Auschwitz under the anti-Semitic laws passed by Italy's fascist regime, was reported to have turned to the Roma captain and said before they deported me, at the age of 15, "I was smarter with the ball than you."
Sed was among 17 Holocaust survivors at Thursday's meeting.
Another told footballers that it was irrelevant that only a minority of far-right activists was involved.
"There are [only] 50 cretins in the stadium?" Piero Terracina was quoted as asking the players and officials. "Nazism also started with 50 cretins."
The Hungarian writer, Edith Bruck, author of the Holocaust memoir, Who Loves You Like This, described how her life had been saved by the actions of individuals at the camps where she was interned. She was reported to have said that a single footballer who stopped playing could restore dignity to the game.
Although Roma has some far-right fans, it is the capital's other club, Lazio, and one of its supporters' groups, the Irriducibili or "Indomitables" who have been accused of racism and fascism.
Last December the Italian football federation fined and suspended Di Canio for making the "Roman salute" in games against Livorno and Juventus.
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