B’nai B’rith to honour Munich 11

FORTY years after they were murdered at the Munich Olympics, 11 Israeli athletes will be honoured by B’nai B’rith, 12 days before the start of the London Games.

B’nai B’rith’s Yitzhak Rabin Unit has invited incoming co-president, Melbourne businessman Jock Orkin, to lead a candle-lighting memorial for the Israelis, who were slaughtered by terrorists during the 1972 Games.

Orkin, 67, a former weightlifter, has a painful connection with the members of the Israeli squad who never returned from Germany alive. He was in Munich in 1972 to compete for Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), then ruled by a white supremacist regime. His country had been barred from competition by the International Olympic Committee, but its athletes, already in the city, were permitted to stay on.

On September 3, 1972, two days before the terrorist attack, Orkin had breakfast with Israeli weightlifter Yosef Romano. He and other Israeli weightlifters recognised Orkin, then a Rhodesian champion and Maccabiah athlete, and called him to their table in the dining hall.

Orkin and a friend from London chatted with the weightlifters and made plans to celebrate Rosh Hashanah. “We sat down and spent an hour or more with the Israelis.”

Romano, who had competed against Orkin previously, spoke of the tough competition the weightlifters could expect.

“He looked at me, shook his head and said to me about the weightlifting, ‘Zeh lo sport, zeh milchamah [‘This isn’t sport, it’s war’].”

It was the last time Orkin would see Romano. He and Israeli wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg were the first of the Israeli team to die at the hands of the Black September terrorist group. They were shot dead in the early hours of September 5, as they struggled to block the doorway of the Israeli dormitory to the terrorists.

Nine other athletes were abducted and died some 18 hours later in a gun battle between Black September terrorists and German sharpshooters at an airfield near Munich.

The fateful breakfast with the Israelis would haunt Orkin for years, as he built his weightlifting career and became a 10-time Rhodesian and three-time South African champion, before immigrating to Australia.

After the Munich massacre, his mother in Rhodesia received a Black September letter bomb from Malaysia, which police safely detonated. Orkin believes his family was targeted by the PLO because of his brief connection with the Israelis.

At the end of the B’nai B’rith ceremony on July 15, each slain athlete’s name will be read out as their photograph is projected and an Australian Jewish athlete will light a memorial candle in their honour. Rabbi Philip Heilbrunn will recite Kaddish, followed by a minute’s silence, and then Hatikvah.

For details of the service, call Brian Schauer on (03) 9077 3738 or email bschauer@optusnet.com.au.

PETER KOHN

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