On Holocaust Memorial Day let’s commit to ridding football of antisemitism

A mural at Chelsea’s stadium of Árpád Weisz and Julius Hirsch, Jewish footballers murdered at Auschwitz, and Ron Jones, an English POW and Auschwitz survivor. Photograph: Adam Soller

If you have visited Stamford Bridge over the past years, you may well have spotted a 12-metre-tall mural, hanging high on the West Stand wall. Painted by the British-Israeli street artist Solomon Souza, it depicts three footballers: Julius Hirsch and Árpád Weisz, Jewish players murdered at Auschwitz, and Ron Jones, an English POW and Auschwitz survivor.

Today, on the 77th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp, the world commemorates International Holocaust Remembrance Day. We honour Hirsch, Weisz and the millions of people who were brutally murdered, alongside the millions of others targeted and killed by the Nazis and their collaborators.