The head of Germany’s Jewish community said he regretted that only Germany captain Philipp Lahm and Poland-born players Miroslav Klose and Lukas Podolski visited the site of the Nazi concentration camp where an estimated 1.3 million people were murdered.
While praising the visit last Friday generally as a “good sign”, the president of the Central Committee of Jews, Dieter Graumann, admitted that he wished the whole team had gone.
“More would have been better,” Dieter Graumann, president of the Central Committee of Jews, said. “These people are football idols and their visit would have had more of an impact than 1,000 of our speeches could have had,” he added.
Team manager Oliver Bierhoff, head coach Joachim Löw and president of the German football federation, Wolfgang Niersbach, also visited the camp.
“With the visit to Auschwitz, we wanted to show that a dark chapter of German history will never be forgotten and must never be repeated,” Bierhoff said.
England's players are due to visit the Auschwitz site during the tournament and Roy Hodgson’s squad were given a talk on the Holocaust by two survivors last week.
Graumann also accused Bierhoff of what he described as “provocation” for using the German word “Kamingespraech” (“fireside chat”) in the context of the Holocaust.
The manager had said in an interview the day before the visit that the issue of the Holocaust would be addressed with players.
“This could be in the form of a fireside chat or a lecture,” Bierhoff was quoted as saying.
The use of such a word was unacceptable given the allusion to the fires of the Holocaust, Graumann said.
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