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Standing on the Südtribüne, in the middle of the wall of black and yellow noisy noise, the song began: "Build a tram from Gelsenkirchen to Auschwitz." Gelsenkirchen being the city of fierce rivals of Dortmund, Schalke.
Even now, all those years later, the song about sending Schalke supporters to Auschwitz, where the Nazis murdered Jews from Europe, remains engraved in Lörcher's memory.
So much so that Lörcher is actively involved in an innovative educational project that brings Dortmund fans to visit concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka. Between 1933 and 1945, while Germany was under Hitler's reign, the Nazis used a network of camps in Central and Eastern Europe to kill about 6 million Jews and millions of other people.
Antisemitic songs and monkey songs meant for black players were not unusual in the late 80's and 90's, Lörcher recalls, but it's also the moment he thinks football is starting to become aware hatred that is embedded in this sport.
In clubs like Dortmund, it was the fans who took control of the fight against racism, working with the club to eliminate the far-right element that had been part of Dortmund's support throughout the 1980s.
"In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the hooligans movement was very strong in Germany," said CNN Lörcher, a former ultra who became a liaison officer with the club's supporters.
"In the early 2000s, the ultra movement started to change that, the ultras take care of what people should be singing in the stadium and there was a discussion of the words that should be used inside. from the stadium. "
Today, Lörcher is an integral part of Dortmund's fight against hatred, participating in the management of a supporters' project that raises awareness of anti-Semitism among its supporters.
"The fans are part of society and we are a big football club with more than 150,000 members," he said.
"We are part of the German society and we must make sure to take into account an important subject."
"Clubs take control"
Dortmund is not the only club to be vehemently raised against racism and discrimination.
AfD, which has consistently rejected accusations of an anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic party, won 12.6 percent of the vote in the 2017 federal election.
For Borussia Dortmund, one of the leading German football clubs, the fight against anti-Semitism and racism has been a long and often arduous affair.
During the 1980s and 1990s, the club drew far-right supporters, including those of the infamous "Borussenfront", which became one of the most feared thugs gangs in the country.
But a combination of ultra leftist movement and club projects, such as the one undertaken in Dortmund, helped to reduce the influence of the far right.
Lörcher is at the heart of a new project that helps raise awareness of club supporters to the horrors of the Holocaust. In progress since 2011, the project takes supporters to concentration camps where a number of Jews from Dortmund have been murdered.
Up to now, supporters have traveled to Auschwitz, Majdanek, Belzec and Treblinka, as well as to Zamosc, the city of Nazi-occupied Poland, where many Jewish families from Dortmund were transported.
"This is only part of our program, but I would say the impact has been very strong," Lörcher told CNN.
"Currently we have an anti-discrimination initiative for supporters, we also inform our employees who are very interested in this topic, and our delegates are also involved.
"If there is an incident in the stadium, many people come and say that there is an incident and we would like to respond.
"We know that there can be an incident every time, but the reaction to this incident is very powerful."
This is the need to participate in the program, which often requires Lörcher to refuse applications to about 120 people who request 30 to 35 seats.
Lörcher said the success of the program had been such that Dortmund had started helping other clubs design projects from them.
He now estimates that between 10 and 15 clubs in Germany offer a program similar to that of Dortmund.
"I think we had this idea of giving people the power to make them feel like they can do positive things with the club, and then it's developed," he said about program.
"We just had the idea to visit and then we recognized what we could do with the educational programs.
"The Auschwitz Museum and its former concentration camps were an idea to empower people and bring them together in this very important project to learn the lessons of history."
"Dortmund fights against racism"
Located in the heart of the Ruhr industrial region, the rust belt, Dortmund has long been a favorite haunt for far-right trends.
This is what made their anti-discrimination work even more vital, according to journalist Felix Tamsut, who has largely covered supporters' culture in Germany.
"I think that in general, there are quite a few clubs in Germany that have anti-fascist supporters of the left, but few are located in the socio-economic area in which Dortmund is located," he said. .
"In terms of the city, the region, the history, the voting pattern, people are more inclined to vote for far-right parties, I do not speak in mbadive percentages, but even more so than in big cities, and this is the reality in which Borussia Dortmund is located.
"This is what makes their social work with young people even more important.In this reality, Dortmund opposes racism, discrimination, especially anti-Semitism, homophobia, badism, and this marks his imprint.
"It was not so long ago, many people on the famous terrace were singing songs that will not be accepted today, and that has largely changed thanks to some ultra groups that have committed and decided to end it. "
Although anti-Semitic incidents in German football are sporadic, they are by no means rare.
The tweeter, who would be a supporter of FC Union Berlin, told Cohen that he should disappear into "the chamber", referring to the gas chambers used by the Nazis to murder Jews during the Holocaust.
The tweet, published after Cohen was expelled in the 2-0 defeat of his team in Berlin, was condemned by Union, the German Football Association and Israel's ambbadador to Germany, Jeremy Issacharoff .
In a statement, the club said: "Chemnitz is a city open minded, tolerant and peaceful, we stand out strongly from all actions and statements racist and right.
According to the German police, these incidents occurred in a context where crimes against Jews had increased by nearly 10% last year.
"In general, the situation is much better than it was 20 or 30 years ago, and that's largely thanks to ultra-active activism and fans in general," Tamsut told CNN.
"But anti-Semitism is increasingly becoming part of German society, so it will certainly have an effect on football.
"In high-level football, it is unlikely that you will experience anti-Semitic feelings, but in the lower leagues … it may be a different story."
& # 39; Identity & # 39;
A CNN survey conducted in seven European countries in Germany, Great Britain, Sweden, France, Poland, Hungary and Austria revealed the prevalence of anti-Semitism in 2018.
In Germany, the poll found that 55% of respondents thought that anti-Semitism was a growing problem in the country today.
In addition, it was found that 40% of German young adults aged 18 to 34 were unaware of the Holocaust.
For Markus Gunnewig, Deputy Director of the Steinwache Museum in Dortmund, the results are hardly surprising.
Over the last four years, fans of Borussia Dortmund have visited the museum that once housed the city's most infamous political prison.
According to Gunnewig, about 6,600 people were imprisoned on the site between 1933 and 1945, many of whom were tortured or sent from prison to death camps.
"People know the name of Auschwitz and know that 6 million Jews have been murdered, but most people do not know the details, even the teachers," he told CNN
"You can not expect students to know if the teachers do not know it either."
Gunnewig hopes that the partnership between the museum and Borussia Dortmund will help to sensitize supporters to the Holocaust and the fate of the city's Jews during the Holocaust.
He believes that the work done by the club is essential to help fight anti-Semitism and xenophobia in society.
"History is a very important part of identity and people are part of that football culture," added Gunnewig.
"For these people, for most people, identity is a very important thing.What we have managed to do in recent years, is to integrate this National Socialist past and this holocaust to the local history and the identity of many people.
"So because of their identity as" Dortmunders "and supporters of the local football club, they are also interested in this part of the story.
"These tours that we organize with football supporters are part of the club's considerable efforts to fight against racism and neo-Nazism.
"It's not only about the history and identity of these people, but also about the struggle of many people against neo-Nazis as well as those at the stadium who, especially in the '80s and early' 90s, were very strong and present in the stadium, fortunately changed in recent years.
Atika Shubert and Michael Schwartz of CNN have been reported to Dortmund. James Masters wrote and brought back from London.
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