Letter from Oshrat Romano Kandell, daughter of

Letter from Oshrat Romano Kandell, daughter of
Yossef Romano, who was murdered during the 1972
Munich Olympics
My name is Oshrat. I am 46 years old, married and mother to three children.
ln 1972,1 was a six-and-a-half years old. A girl who started first grade a few
days before her father, Yosef Romano, was brutally murdered at the Olympic
Games in Munich, Germany, and never got to see me start on my new path.
Growing up in the shadow of that traumatic event is something that will
accompany us for the rest of our lives.
To feel this as a child: that at the height of the feeling of family pride, you
receive the lesson of your life
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of cruelty and inhumanity.
As a child, it took me a while to understand that my father would never again
play with me, or buy me presents, or be proud of me, and that I wouldn't be
able to call him "daddy".
As time went on and I grew up, I also realized that my father would never get
to meet my children, his grandchildren, although the fault is not his.
We orphans have dealt with questions that could not always be answered and
some apparently never will be.
At every stage of our lives, we must struggle again with this traumatic
bereavement.
We learned about our father through glimpses caught in pictures and stories,
and some were lucky enough to have living memories of him. But we grew up
proud, determined that, despite the pain, we would go on.
The father/husband/brother has stayed young while his grandchildren are
growing up. lt's not at all simple to grow up with a virtual grandfather. A
grandfather that you know only from the pictures in the family album, which
are sometimes sparse, from stories and, I'm sorry to say, from memorial
services.
This means that, over the years, my childhood was shaped alongside
memorial services and ceremonies. To my regret, one meaningful ceremony
has yet to be held the ceremony which is the responsibility of the
International Olympic Committee, which was responsible for the celebration
when my father was still alive and participated in the Olympics.
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We, the children, and our mothers, the wives of the lsraeli athletes, had only a
limited amount of time with them and were left mostly with a feeling of pain
and loss.
You should.,know that, even after 40 years, the wounds have not healed. For
40 years, Ankie Spitzer and my mother, llana Romano, have been asking the
IOC for one minute of silence in memory of the athletes murdered at the
Olympic Games.
Just one minute...
Can you understand what it's like to grow up for 40 years and to ask, each
time the Olympic Games are held, for just one minute of respect for our dear
eleven athletes? Every four years, ten times, time after time, begging for just
one minute of silence. Forty years of insisting on the only right left to them as
victims of the Olympic movement.
Perhaps someone has forgotten, but they were murdered inside the Olympic
Village during the Olympic Games!!
This is the least the Olympic world owes them after its failure to keep them
safe.
Today, I am the mother of three wonderful children who have been educated
in the traditions and values of sportsmanship. lt hasn't been easy; happy
moments are always mixed with pain.
For my children, instinctively, when they see the five rings of the Olympic
symbol, they see the grandfather they never knew.
Commemoration is the natural right of the athletes who were murdered and
slaughtered on the altar of the Olympics; for us it is our central purpose.
We are obligated to continue to mention and to demand their commemoration
in the place that they deserve - on the Olympic stage, publicly.
This is a moral lesson to the entire world. The Olympic Games were meant to
be fair athletic competitions between nations, and terror and violence have no
place there.
A minute of silence in their memory is a decent, human way to express
brotherhood and friendship between peoples that aspire to athletic
achievements.
We, the families, orphans and grandchildren, will never give up until our
request touches the compassionate hearts of the IOC members. We will
peisevere and never give up until the Munich fallen receive the treatment they
deserve, at least in death.
I thank
you and appeal to you for your support'
Oshrat Romano Kandell