Greg and Suzanne Small were buzzing with excitement as they began crossing the bridge into Ramat Gan stadium on that fateful night — July 14, 1997.
It was their first experience at a Maccabiah. But they never made it to the opening ceremony of the 15th Games. The makeshift bridge collapsed as the Australian team walked across it, plunging them into the polluted waters of the Yarkon River.
Greg, 37, and Yetty Bennett, 50, died at the site; Warren Zines, 54, and Elizabeth Sawicki, 47, died weeks later.
Scores more were injured, including Suzanne, who suffered a dislocated shoulder, five breaks in her ankle, swelling around her heart and unimaginable emotional trauma that continues to this day.
Now, 12 years on, their 19-year-old son, Josh, has been selected for the Australian ten-pin bowling team at the 18th Maccabiah which opens on Monday.
He was just seven at the time of the disaster and was staying at his cousins’ house in Queensland with his sister, Rebecca.
Suzanne recalls ringing her sister-in-law from hospital in Israel. “I asked her not to tell the kids but she said: ‘It’s too late, they’ve seen it on it TV.’ Rebecca was only five. She asked: ‘Does that mean my daddy isn’t coming home?’ Josh said kaddish for 12 months.”
“I was watching television at the time, and all of a sudden the disaster popped on to the news and it was too late for my auntie to prevent us from seeing it,” Josh recalls. “The next thing I know I was on a plane to Sydney. The rest is a blur.”
Josh, who will join over 400 athletes and officials in the Australian team, wants to continue the legacy of his father, the team’s number one bowler in 1997. “I want to continue what my father did. I’d like to go there, compete and finish what he started. I’m feeling pretty excited. It’ll be sad, but a good thing to do.”
It will be his first time competing at a Maccabiah, although he joined his mum, sister and survivors of the other victims at the emotional memorial service in Israel at the 2005 Games. He has also been asked to speak at Maccabi’s official memorial at the site of the disaster on July 10.
He says he was virtually “born in a bowling alley”, growing up watching his father every weekend. His mother also started a ten-pin youth league at Maccabi in Sydney when Josh was still a toddler, and his interest grew from there.
“Even when Josh was a few months old he was at the bowling alley with us,” says Suzanne. “His fourth birthday party was at a bowling rink.”
But it was only after the ’97 Maccabiah disaster that he started taking ten-pin more seriously. Now when he bowls in tournaments he wears his dad’s uniform from those fateful games.
The 2009 Maccabiah, dubbed the “Jewish Olympics”, is expected to draw more than 7,000 athletes from 60 countries. Among the Australians will be up to 35 survivors of those ill-fated 1997 Games.
Some still harbour ill-will towards the Maccabi World Union (MWU) because of its ongoing employment of Yoram Eyal, who was chairman of the organising committee of the 1997 Games and the man who commissioned the building of the bridge. Today, he is still general manager of the Kfar Maccabiah village and sits on the MWU executive.
“He will be never be forgiven as long as I have breath in me,” says Suzanne.
Eyal was ordered by the Israeli courts in 2000 to do six months’ community service; four other officials convicted of criminal negligence received jail sentences.
Eyal told the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv recently: “I received an easy punishment because I was the one who ordered the work and not the engineer. I’ve come to accept it, but it’s still very hard for me to get used to the anger of the families.”
For years after the tragedy, ties between Australian Jewry and Israel were strained, not just because of the disaster but because of how the victims’ families and survivors were treated in the aftermath. Tensions cooled somewhat after the victims’ families were paid about 20 million Australian dollars (almost £10 million) in compensation in 2003. Some 10 million dollars of that went to the family of Sasha Elterman, a 15-year-old tennis player who swallowed deadly toxins from the river and underwent over 30 brain and lung operations, but miraculously survived.
At the time, the Yarkon River was one of Israel’s most polluted waterways. Parts of the river have since been cleaned up in a multi-million-dollar project funded by Jewish National Fund supporters in Australia, but other sections remain dangerously toxic. Indeed, water authorities in Israel remain sceptical that the rehabilitation plan will be effective and some argue that pollution continues to enter the Yarkon from sewerage plants, according to recent media reports in Israel.
In late April, the JNF dedicated a memorial at the site of the disaster; Lynne Zines, whose husband Warren died from the poison in the river, attended the ceremony.
“This tragedy took the life of Warren, my childhood sweetheart,” she said. “Warren and I shared a deep love for Israel, and I can not imagine a greater mitzvah than this project, which is about rebirth and revitalisation.”
Suzanne Small says: “The flashbacks and nightmares still come and go. I’m in constant pain in my back and shoulder. I still have the occasional panic attack — I have medication with me all the time. You just don’t know when something is going to happen.” But she says her heart will be “pounding with excitement” when she sees her son march into the stadium on Monday. “I wouldn’t miss that opening ceremony for anything,” she says. “It would have been absolutely beautiful to have father and son together. It’s always emotional to go back to the site. It’s like I’m visiting my husband’s grave because that’s where it happened. I think of my husband every single day.
“But this is Josh’s time to shine. I’m very proud and very anxious. Josh always had a goal to follow in his dad’s footsteps. His dreams have finally come true.”
Adds Josh: “Winning a medal would be a bonus. I’d just rather go and compete.”
