ID card of Israeli athlete killed in Munich returned

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JERUSALEM (JTA) — The national identification card of an Israeli athlete murdered during the Munich Olympics was returned to his family.

In a ceremony Wednesday at Israel’s Foreign Ministry, the ID card of wrestler Eliezer Halfin was returned to his sister, Rima Goldwasser. Halfin was one of 11 Israeli athletes killed by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

The card had been hidden for the nearly 40 years by a German police officer whose son, Holzer Tilmann, turned it over to the Israeli Embassy in Germany after his father’s death.

"I call on the government of Germany to make every effort to locate other documents that are perhaps being held somewhere, because hundreds of documents are still missing," Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said during the ceremony. "The return of these documents to the families is more than just a humane gesture; it is of historical importance for perpetuating the event and engraving it on the pages of history."

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