February 09, 2006
Fans of an Italian soccer team are to be given copies of 'Life is Beautiful', a comedy film about the Holocaust. The initiative, by the teams fan newspaper, is seen as a way of combating the neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic views of some of the club's fans. The newspaper, Il Romanista, which has a circulation of 10,000 copies a day, took the decision after fans of the Roma club displayed neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic banners during a match at Rome's Olympic Stadium last month.
The Roberto Benigni film, which won three Oscars at the 1999 Academy Awards, tells the story of a Jewish family deported to an Italian concentration during the Second World War. Announcing the initiative, the paper's editor said "At least this way one might grasp what happened in the death camps".