LOS ANGELES -- Mimi Weinberg, widowed with a month-old son when Arab terrorists murdered her husband and 10 Israeli teammates in Munich in 1972, wants U.S. officials to set aside a moment of silence to commemorate the massacre.
Mrs. Weinberg, here under sponsorship of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, which also wants the commemorative minute, said her request is not only a memorial to those slain but also a plea for world understanding.
She asked for the moment of silence for either Saturday's gala opening ceremonies or at the closing of the games Aug. 12. She doubts she will get it, but is determined to continue to try.
It was 12 years ago that Mrs. Weinberg, in Tel Aviv, learned from a radio newscast of the death of her husband of 11 months and the massacre of the 10 other Israelis. Her next five years was purgatory.
Nothing, it seemed, could liberate her depression. She drank heavily, but liquor helped not at all.
'I wanted everyone to go to hell,' she said.
Mrs. Weinberg withdrew totally, even from her baby.
'I didn't want him,' she said, adding she could not bear even to touch the child sired by Moshe Weinberg, coach of the Israeli wrestling team.
She was talking about Gouri, now 12, who looked up solemnly as she recalled the tragedy that stunned the world.
Gouri is darkly handsome like his father, a man Jews everywhere consider a heroic martyr.
In the last act of his life, Weinberg deflected the weapons of two of the killers and warned his teammates to flee.
Mrs. Weinberg remembers raving in grief before being tranquilized byphysicians. She slept a day and a half before awakening in a prison of darkness from which there seemed no escape.
Donations poured in from around the world, but she sent most of the money back.
'I did not want pity,' she said. 'I wanted understanding.'
Mimi Weinberg, who eventually conquered her grief, still seeks understanding.
A strikingly attractive woman of 38, she thinks a minute of silence is a small enough request to recall that tragic day in hopes it never will be repeated.
When Gouri Weinberg reached 8, he realized something was missing in his life. It was the father he never knew.
'I had so many questions about him,' the boy recalled. 'The family told me many stories about him but I still ask questions about my father.'
For Mrs. Weinberg, it is not important that her husband be remembered as heroic.
'What is important is that people do not forget what happened in Munich,' she said. 'Maybe next year terrorists will attack people at concerts. Our society is turning into a world of guns.'
Asked to sum up the message she came to the Olympics to deliver, Mimi Weinberg thought a moment, then said softly, 'Please try to understand each other.'
