MUNICH-. German police announced on Tuesday that they had opened an investigation after fans of the Roman club Lazio were seen on Monday giving the fascist salute in a beer hall in Munich where Adolf Hitler approved the party program nazi.
“An operation at the Hofbräuhaus can be confirmed. Due to the still open investigation, we cannot say anything more at the moment,” Munich police told AFP on Tuesday.
“Yesterday, Monday, March 4, there were already Lazio fans in Munich, in various places in the city and also in the Hofbräuhaus. From 6:00 p.m. the Munich police were in front of and inside the Hofbräuhaus. That’s something normal before a football game or a big event,” the brewery said.
“If there was behavior contrary to the constitution or xenophobic, we firmly condemn it,” added those responsible for the establishment.
In amateur videos sent to AFP and recorded around 10:30 p.m., dozens of fans dressed in the colors and shirts of Lazio Roma can be seen at the Hofbräuhaus giving the Nazi or fascist salute, with their right arms extended and raised.
In a video published on the Instagram account of the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Lazio fans are also seen singing: “We don’t care about prison, the Black Shirts will triumph. If they don’t triumph, there will be chaos with batons and grenades. Duce Duce! Duce!”
The Black Shirts refer to the militia of the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini.
In recent years, Lazio fans have been regularly singled out for racist or anti-Semitic behavior.
In 2017, they manipulated an image of Anne Frank, a Jewish teenager who died in the Nazi concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen in Germany, which they illustrated with an AS Roma t-shirt.
Founded at the end of the 16th century, the Hofbräuhaus is a Munich brewery, where Adolf Hitler presented the 25 points of the Nazi party program in February 1920.
Source: AFP
