Euro 2012: Racist Abuse of Dutch Players in Poland Clouds Soccer Tournament

After a visit to Auschwitz, the Dutch soccer team experiences racist jeering from local Polish fans. But will Euro 2012's organizers really crack down on bigotry at Europe's most high profile tournament?

Dutch captain Mark Van Bommel was appalled: Just one day after he and his players had made an emotional pilgrimage to Auschwitz, they were targeted by the same vile racism that the Nazi death camp’s architects used to rationalize their crimes—the dehumanizing people they deemed the “other.” As Holland’s players jogged out for a training session in front of 25,000 people in a stadium at Wroclaw on Thursday, black players like fullback Gregory van der Wiel and midfield enforcer Nigel De Jong were targeted by a section of the crowd making monkey noises — a signature gesture of racists populating Europe’s stadiums.
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Needless to say, UEFA would rather the problem would go away and not spoil its showcase. But there have been sufficient indications that racist and neo-Nazi fans plan to make themselves heard that the European federation has had to plan for the probability of having to deal with incidents of racism in the crowd.