
This provides the opportunity to remember the survivors and their families with humility and respect. This event is aimed at ensuring Auschwitz never happens again and that remains an obligation on everybody born since then. And the football family remembers every year, on the occasion of the ‘Remembrance Day in German Football’, that people from their communities were persecuted and murdered by the Nazis. In addition to many different groups who did not conform to their world view or stood in the way of their political plans, it was primarily people of Jewish heritage who were tortured and murdered in the concentration camps.
This year, the football family particularly remembers the people who were stigmatised and brutally persecuted as ‘deviants and homosexuals’ due to their sexuality and sexual identity. Over 10,000 were transported to the concentration camps by the Nazis. They were often victims of perverse medical experiments by the camp doctors who were intent on destroying their victims’ sexual capacity. Their lot included being subjected to mocking contempt and tormented by other camp inmates in excessive acts of violence. They were harassed to the point of suicide, which represented a means of maintaining their dignity and putting an end to their immeasurable suffering.
It is self-evident that sexuality and sexual identity should be inalienable human rights. This also involves deepening and intensifying the dialogue on the issue in football and also forms part of ‘learning from Auschwitz’. This lesson has to be learned again and again. That is the message from the survivors of concentration camps on the ‘Seventeenth Remembrance Day in German Football’ on matchdays 18 and 19.


It was a disappointing Saturday night. The Werkself lost 4-1 to VfB Stuttgart to start the new year on Bundesliga matchday 16 in 2025/26, a result that left both players and fans disappointed. "We played without any passion," said Alejandro Grimaldo honestly afterwards. Teammate Jarell Quansah was even more self-critical, emphasising: "We were miles off it in the first half. You can't put in a performance like that, especially in front of our own fans and I can only apologise to them, to be honest." Read on for the reaction, facts and stats from the clash with VfB Stuttgart in the Werkself review.
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Women’s team forward Paulina Bartz is leaving Bayer 04 Leverkusen to play for Hamburg SV until the end of the season. The 20-year-old, whose contract runs to 2027, joins the Bundesliga newcomers on loan until the summer.
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Jarell Quansah and Alejandro Grimaldo speak to Werkself-TV following Bayer 04's 4-1 defeat to VfB Stuttgart on Bundesliga Matchday 16...
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Four Bayer 04 players are in action at the 35th edition of the Africa Cup of Nations being played in Morocco from 21 December to 18 January 2026: Eliesse Ben Seghir for the hosts, Edmond Tapsoba with Burkina Faso, Ibrahim Maza for Algeria and Christian Kofane with Cameroon. Updates on the AFCON matches involving Werkself players...
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