Women's national team members moved by Yad Vashem visit
October 22, 2021
A delegation of the German women's national football team attended the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem on Friday. The world's largest Holocaust memorial, which serves as a museum, memorial and research site, documents the names of many of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazi regime.
During the visit, Joti Chatzialexiou, the sporting director of the German national teams, and women's coach Martina Voss-Tecklenburg laid a wreath at the memorial.
"We must not tolerate antisemitism, we must not tolerate exclusion, we must not simply must not tolerate human misconduct," said Voss-Tecklenburg said in a statement posted on the DFB's (German Football Association's) website.
"For us sometimes things are so far away, and today they are once again very, very close. We are grateful to be here," she added.
"This is German history. We represent Germany as a national team, so we have to deal with it and we have to be aware of what happened back then," said Tabea Wassmuth, one of five players in the delegation. "That's why I'm very grateful that I was able to be here today and experience this."
After the visit to Yad Vashem, the full team was scheduled to visit several other sites in Jerusalem.
Their visit to Jerusalem came less than 24 hours after Germany struggled to a 1-0 win over Israel in a qualifying match for the 2023 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand. Germany sit top of Group H with a perfect nine points from their first three games.
The team are to fly back to Germany on Saturday to prepare for the return match against Israel in the western German town of Essen on Tuesday.