Communal leaders recall the tragedy and its aftermath

Former Jewish Community Council of Victoria (JCCV) and Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) president Nina Bassat remembers walking up to a 4.30am phone call from her daughter Sally, who had made aliyah three years earlier.

“I kept saying to her, what is it? And even at that early stage, she said ‘criminal negligence’. Half-an-hour after I’d hung up – it was still very, very early morning – I received a phone call from The Age newspaper saying, ‘What’s Israel done to our athletes?'” Bassat recalled.

“That night, there was a telephone hook-up with the Maccabi people in Israel, the ZFA [Zionist Federation of Australia] president, myself … and the team had to make a decision, what they were going to do. It was a heart-wrenching conversation, we talked late into the night and the team decided to stay.

“I was in tears, but I felt so enormously proud of them, because it showed a resilience and a willingness to just keep going to honour the people who had been hurt.”

After the tragedy, Bassat stood at Melbourne airport with then Israeli ambassador Shmuel Moyal waiting for the repatriated body of Melbourne victim Elizabeth Sawicki. She recalled it was “a miserable, horrible July morning, which would have been miserable, horrible if the weather had been good”.

A few days later JCCV held a gathering for the participants, the families of those affected and the whole community.

“We tried to offer whatever support we could,” she said. “We were absolutely shattered, so many people were impacted.”

Bassat would come to play a key role in what she described as “very lengthy, drawn-out negotiations” that were to follow, which included parties such as the Maccabi World Union (MWU), the ZFA, Maccabi leaders in Israel and the Knesset.

“It was touch-and-go whether we would participate in the 2001 Maccabiah Games because up till the very end there still hadn’t been adequate compensation, these matters had not been resolved.”

Along with her daughter, Bassat attended the 20-year commemoration of the incident in 2017.

“It was extraordinarily moving … for me certainly, and I think for some of the family members to whom I spoke, it was a healing experience.”

With her grandson in Israel now playing basketball for Australia, she said there will be “a third generation representing our family at what was a very deeply personal ­experience for me”.

“It’s still part of our psyche,” she said. “What happened in 1997 is still very much part of our memory and still part of the Maccabi family memory and it always will be.”

Zionist Council of NSW life governor Ron Weiser, who was ZFA president in 1997, said this week that the bridge collapse “caused the biggest rupture between Australian Jewry and Israel that I have seen in my 50 years of communal involvement”.

The four Australians who died and more than 60 injured, some very seriously, had “travelled to Israel for no other reason than to participate in an event to celebrate sport and the links between Jews worldwide, centred around the Jewish State”, he said.

“A few months following the tragedy and when Maccabi World Union (MWU) proved unwilling or unable to deal with the aftermath, the ZFA was asked to step in,” Weiser recalled.

“Many obstacles faced us, but the Israeli justice system sent four of those connected to building the bridge to jail and sentenced the MWU organiser to community service.”

And for the first time in Israel’s history, he said, a Knesset Committee of Inquiry was set up at the instigation of a Diaspora community.

“It was this committee, which ran over two Knesset terms, that led to our community’s demands finally being met or completed,” he said.

These demands were primarily, the resignations of both heads of the MWU; the creation of an unprecedented financial compensation pool by the Israeli government, “needed because as part of MWU’s negligence in regards to the Maccabiah itself, it was woefully underinsured”, Weiser said; and the establishment of protocols for future events of that scale, “so that Australians and all participants could return to participate in future Maccabiahs with confidence”.

“While looking forward to a wonderful event this week, we will also remember those who needlessly suffered such deep and lasting loss 25 years ago,” he said.

ECAJ co-CEO Peter Wertheim – who was president of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies at the time and was involved in the negotiations – recalled the Sydney community coming together at The Great Synagogue with a video link-up to Israel.

“There was no Zoom in those days but we managed it,” he said.

“All told, it was a very unhappy time for Australia’s Jewish community. There was outrage at the combination of arrogance and blundering incompetence of the MWU organisers.

“When the truth emerged about the shambolic organisation behind the construction and failure of the bridge, the bypassing of building regulations and financial impropriety, it was painfully disillusioning for many of us. The tragedy had been so avoidable.”