ROME: An extract from the Diary of Anne Frank will be read out to Italian football fans next weekend in a federation reaction to the latest burst of anti-semitic behaviour.

Montage pictures of the Holocaust victim wearing the jersey of Lazio’s city rivals AS Roma were found on walls and bathrooms in a section of Rome’s Olympic Stadium used by Lazio supporters during their Serie A match against Cagliari on Sunday.

According to Reuters, the FIGC has said that the next matches in all Italy’s divisions will feature a minute’s silence “to condemn the recent episodes of anti-Semitism and to continue to remember the Holocaust.”
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Players will line up in the centre of the pitch during the reading of this passage from the diary:
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“I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness; I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquillity will return once more.”

On Monday, Lazio president Claudio Lotito and other team officials laid a wreath of flowers at Rome’s synagogue in an effort to made amends with the Jewish community.

Rome Jewish community leader Ruth Dureghello welcomed the gesture but said it was not enough. She said “collective awareness” was needed to bring an end to such anti-Semitic acts.

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