THE elite of our sportsmen have died and the Olympic spirit died with them." So said Israeli Deputy Premier Yigal Allon last week as his countrymen buried their dead of Munich. The nation's Olympic hopes had never been especially high; Israel has no professional sports and only mediocre amateur games. Nonetheless, the men who died last week represented their country's best hope of improving that record. As Shmuel Larkin, head of the Israeli delegation to Munich, put it: "This crime has thrown Israeli sport back ten years." The victims:
MARK SLAVIN, 18, a promising wrestler, had emigrated from Russia only last May. Slavin had demonstrated in front of the KGB (secret police) headquarters in Minsk for the Jews' right to leave the Soviet Union. In Israel, he began studying Hebrew at a kibbutz near Tel Aviv.
ELIEZER HALFIN, 24, was a wrestler who emigrated from Russia four years ago. A Tel Aviv garage mechanic when he was not practicing wrestling, Halfin, a bachelor, was the only son of a Latvian father who had lost his first wife and children in a Riga ghetto during World War II.
ANDRE SPITZER, 27, was Israel's top fencing coach. He emigrated from Rumania in 1964, later trained in Holland. Spitzer was chief fencing instructor at the Orde Wingate Physical Education Institute, Israel's top institution for sports instruction. He leaves a Dutch wife, also a fencer, and a two-month-old daughter.
DAVID BERGER, 28, a weight lifter -from Shaker Heights, Ohio, had set tied in Israel in 1971. Berger, who held dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship, was a law graduate of Columbia University. He had postponed beginning his law practice while he trained for the Olympics. After Munich, Berger intended to marry and enter the Israeli army. His parents. Dr. and Mrs. Benjamin Berger, learned of his death while watching the Games on TV in Shaker Heights. All Ohio state flags were at half-staff last week in his memory.
ZE'EV FRIEDMAN, 28, a bantam weight lifter, was Israel's best hope for a medal. A physical education teacher in a Haifa suburb and a bachelor, Friedman came to Israel in 1960 from Poland.
JOSEPH ROMANO, 32, an Arabic-speaking Jew from Libya, was the country's top weight-lifting champion. Recalled an Olympic committee member: "He was so crazy about sports that he lost two jobs because he spent more time training than working." Romano's latest job was as a window decorator. At Munich, muscle damage in one leg had prevented him from lifting the 430 kilograms that he could usually heft without trouble. He was due to return home to his wife and three daughters for an operation after the Games.
MOSHE WEINBERG, 32, a Sabra (Israeli-born), was the first to die at Olympic Village. A physical education teacher, Weinberg had been coach of the wrestling team for the past six years. He is survived by his third wife, Miriam, and a five-week-old son, Gur.
AMITZUR SHAPIRA, 40, ranked as Israel's best track and field coach. A physical education teacher, Shapira had much to look forward to on the day he was killed: his most successful protégée, Esther Shahamurov, was about to run in the semifinals of the 100-meter hurdles. Instead, she accompanied her coach's coffin home. Shapira left a wife and four children.