Italian football clubs to stage Anne Frank readings to tackle anti-Semitism

Anne Frank's diary will be read aloud at all football matches in Italy this week, in an unprecedented reaction to acts of anti-Semitism by Lazio fans.

All matches in Serie A, B, C, and amateur and youth games over the weekend will observe a minute of silence combined with The Anne Frank diary passage reading to promote Holocaust remembrance.

The chosen diary passage reads: "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."

The measures come after reports of Lazio fans posting stickers of Holocaust victim Anne Frank wearing the jersey of rivals Roma alongside anti-Semitic slogans.

Lazio president Claudio Lotito visited a synagogue in Rome on Tuesday and brought a floral wreath to remember Holocaust victims.

"I am here to express our total dissociation towards all xenophobia, racism, anti-Semitism," he told Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano believes a lot more needs to be done to tackle the problem of anti-Semitism in Italian football.

Alfano said: "Anne Frank doesn't represent a people or an ethnic group. We are all Anne Frank when faced with the unthinkable. What has happened is inconceivable."

Ruth Dureghello, the president of Rome's Jewish community, expressed her outrage at the anti-Semitic and racist acts across stadiums in Italy.

Dureghello said: "Stadiums cannot be places that are beyond the law and places where anti-Semitist, racist and homophobic people can find a place to show themselves.

"We need to sit down around a table and talk to the institutions, the soccer teams and the soccer federation, to enforce actions and establish a common line for the future."