Ze’ev, my beloved older brother It isn’t easy for me to write and tell you what we’ve been through since you were murdered in Munich. So much has happened since then; my life as I knew it changed completely, and never got back on track. I was already a mother of two girls myself when Mom came over to help me prepare for the holiday. We cooked, listened to music on the radio, and suddenly the broadcast was interrupted, and they announced that terrorists had broken into the Olympic Village and Israeli athletes had been taken hostage. Dad, who worked at a factory, got the news from the factory owner who also drove him home, and we couldn’t understand what was going on for a long time. We were told that everything was fine, and that they were in negotiations. At midnight they even told us the hostages had been freed, and Dad drove me back home. But for some reason I was still uneasy. I didn’t feel that everything was all right, like everyone around me was trying to tell me. I couldn’t sleep, and that night they said on the BBC radio that the athletes had all been murdered. I let out such a cry that my daughters, sixyear- old Bruria and two-year-old Hagit, remember it to this day. The hours after the announcement passed in a haze. I was so shocked that my memories seem foggy, but I’ll never forget that moment when you all came back home in coffins. The roads and streets were completely packed, it was impossible to go anywhere, the whole country was there to pay their respects. The coffins were brought out of the cargo hold one after the other, and moved to command cars. The image still hurts me now as if it were only yesterday. I said goodbye to a living person, and in return received a coffin wrapped in the Israeli flag and carried by six soldiers. You were three years older than me, Ze’ev, and we were very close. As kids you were the older brother and I was the little sister, but that hierarchy changed later, and we became the closest and best friends. Two children of parents who were Holocaust survivors, who had lost their entire family, and we were all they had. Mom was married before and had lost her oneyear- old there, which made her even more attached to you. After the massacre, Dad tried to commit suicide. He took your gun, Ze’ev, but my husband Arie stopped him in time and convinced him not to do it. Mom’s mental state deteriorated, she saw a psychiatrist and was then hospitalized. So by the age of 25 I’d actually lost my brother and both of my parents. Dad had a heart attack a year later, and I stopped working because I had to see them every day. In the end Dad chose to live, he wrote a book and stayed optimistic. Mom was broken and never recovered until her dying day. She couldn’t enjoy anything. She would take three buses to the cemetery every week, come winter or summer, year after year after year. When Dad retired he stopped going with her, but she wouldn’t give up and kept going on her own. We were born in Siberia, Russia. Very few Jews, and rampant antisemitism. Each time our parents would lose their jobs and we’d have to find various solutions, but we never wanted for anything. In 1957 we moved to Poland, where we lived for three years and had comfortable lives. When you were 16 you started talking about moving to Israel, that you wouldn’t stay among gentiles and be a filthy Jew, as they often called you. You were beaten up quite a lot, and you were done with that life. Dad didn’t agree, and suggested that you and Mom travel to Israel, but in the end he was convinced, and we all immigrated there together. This is where you developed your athletic career. You graduated from the Wingate Institute and became a PE teacher. You loved teaching with all your heart, you dedicated yourself to education, it was just as important to you as sports. You gave your students so much of your time, attention and patience. Sports demanded your total attention. After you died, the basketball players who exercised at the gym where you lifted weights would tell me how you’d sit there for hours with your little notebook, planning your own training program. How you trained nonstop, and they’d hear your weights slam onto the gym floor again and again and again. You didn’t have a steady girlfriend, and you didn’t share much with me about your love life even though we were close. Maybe you would have started your own family if it hadn’t been for the massacre, like you’d always dreamed. Your good friend David Berger, who was part of the delegation, tried to set you up with his sister who even arrived in Munich to meet you. After the massacre, Berger’s parents told mine that we were supposed to be a family. Now, as I write to you, I remember how you loved Bruria, how you’d take her to the teacher’s lounge when the nanny stood me up. I remember how you liked taking pictures, going on trips and riding your bicycle. You’d ride it all the way to Eilat and drag David Berger along with you on all those adventures. You were very close, two single men who loved going on trips. You were also close to Yossi Romano, who put up signs for a living and would travel across the country. Whenever he arrived in Haifa, he’d stop to have lunch and visit our parents, even when you weren’t home. How excited you were to be chosen to represent Israel at the Olympic Games. I saw you walking around completely euphoric, ecstatic, over the moon, and I enjoyed watching you blossom and grow. During that short time you felt your hard work had paid off. Our parents were also moved to tears. Dad always loved sports, and he walked around so proud of his eldest son. The night you announced you’d been chosen for the Olympic Games, we had a great and celebratory feast in your honor. We sat together, ate, drank, laughed, and everyone was in high spirits. Your joy was contagious. Before you left for Munich, all the families were invited to see you off at Wingate. When we arrived, you gave Hagit a small wooden model of a weight, and she stood at your side and mimicked your movements. She pretended she was lifting weights too. From there we continued on to a five-day family vacation at Dor Beach, but I couldn’t enjoy myself. I’d heard earlier that there’d been several alerts, and something was gnawing at me. An ominous feeling, as if I felt something bad was about to happen. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I was uneasy from the very moment you left. Today, after years of fighting to get every scrap of information, I know things that I didn’t know then. For instance, that night you were supposed to sleep over at a friend’s, someone who’d studied with you at Wingate and was there to watch the Olympic Games. That friend’s sister was a consulate in Vienna, and she’d also come to Munich to watch the Games and meet her brother. They invited you for dinner and to stay the night, but you refused and stayed in the Olympic Village to accompany Slavin during his weighing. I know that later, when more and more details came into light, there was anger directed towards one of the delegation’s trainers for escaping through the window and not trying to fight, as some of his colleagues had. He came to your shivah, and the parents had some severe things to say to him. Later I realized that when he was a little boy during the Holocaust, his mother had thrown him out of a train, and that was how he’d been saved. He simply learned how to survive, and every person behaves differently under stress. So I started talking to the parents, and tried explaining his side of things to them. It didn’t help. They were still angry. I’m not. I don’t judge him. I think, Ze’ev, that had you survived, you wouldn’t have been able to get over what had happened there. I met the manager of that Olympic Village. Without an ounce of sensitivity he told me the state of that room after 26 hours of negotiation. I’ll spare you the horrific image. And all I can think of is how horrible it must have been for you, seeing Yossi bleed to death right before your eyes. You wouldn’t have been able to get past it. When Mom had late-stage Alzheimer’s, she couldn’t recognize me and thought I was her mother or her sister. One day, about a month before she passed away, I brought her back home from treatment, and we walked past the cemetery. I decided to take her to your grave. Dad, who came with us, was against it and said it would be hard to carry her there, but I insisted. We managed to bring her to your grave, and she smiled, she recognized it. Suddenly it was as if she was briefly herself again, lying down on your grave and calling out your name. She remembered your name even in the state she was in. We knew nothing before the opening ceremonies of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. There were rumors of something the International Olympic Committee was planning, but everything was quite vague. I watched the first minutes of the ceremony, and then the minute of silence came. I was moved. I felt great relief not just for me but for the rest of the families, mainly Ilana and Ankie who led the struggle and dedicated their whole lives to commemorating the 11. Then I was uneasy again. I thought to myself that the gesture we’d waited so long to see, after such a long struggle, was in fact not enough. It didn’t specifically mention the murdered Israeli athletes, it noted COVID-19 casualties among others, I couldn’t understand their decision. If you’re going to do something, why not do it properly? Ze’ev, it’s important for me that you know: I, who was left on my own without a family, without siblings, without parents, ended up joining Arie’s family, and together we started a glorious family of our own. My girls grew into a sense of bereavement but started their own lives, have found success, and had their own children. Bruria, whom you loved dearly, has a oneyear- old grandson, and I have six grandchildren and even a great-grandchild. I visit your grave quite often, making sure it’s clean and tidy like our parents requested. Sometimes I talk to you, feel close to you, tell you things, remember and mostly miss you. I still miss you. Your sister, Nina