B’nai B’rith’s silent tribute to Munich 11
ALMOST 100 people, including past Jewish sporting greats, gathered at a community centre in Highett last Sunday to hold a minute’s silence for 11 slain Israeli athletes on the 40th anniversary of their murders at the 1972 Munich Olympics – a memorial the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has so far refused to consider for this month’s London Games.
ALMOST 100 people, including past Jewish sporting greats, gathered at a community centre in Highett last Sunday to hold a minute’s silence for 11 slain Israeli athletes on the 40th anniversary of their murders at the 1972 Munich Olympics – a memorial the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has so far refused to consider for this month’s London Games.
Jack Aghion, president of B’nai B’rith Yitzhak Rabin Unit, which hosted the ceremony, told of his disgust at the hypocrisy of the world’s silence over the Israeli athletes.
“Why kill athletes during an Olympic Games? Why target civilians with missiles? Why kill a family of five at Itamar [on the West Bank]? And yet the world is silent. But when we ask the IOC to be silent for a minute, they won’t do it.
“We in B’nai B’rith, here in Melbourne, in our own small way, will do it tonight,” he stated.
Jock Orkin, a former weightlifter, who shared a meal with Israeli weightlifters Yosef Romano, David Berger and others, only two days before they were killed, recounted his conversation at the gathering. A group of Australian Jewish athletes and Israeli athletes then joined in a candle lighting, as photos of each of the murdered members of the Israeli team were projected behind them.
Taking turns to memorialise each athlete were Orkin, weightlifter David Lowenstein, water polo champion Nachum Buch, tennis champion Suzy Javor, boxing legends Henry and Leon Nissen, Wimbledon quarter finalist Eva de Jong-Duldig, boxer David Oved, cross-country champions Judy Kohn-Moss and Raie Moss, tenpin bowler Barry Wicks, Maccabi administrator Mike Aronson and Commonwealth Games silver medallist David Lowenstein.
Eva Gordian-McGregor lit a candle in honour of her mother, the late Lucie Gordian of Melbourne, who as an Austrian athlete, had joined a Jewish boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Rabbi Philip Heilbrunn recited Kaddish, after which attendees rose to their feet and paid their silent homage to the murdered athletes.
PETER KOHN
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