NUREMBERG, Germany (AP) — Silence endured long after Holocaust survivor Shaul Paul Ladany had finished speaking to some of the most talented young soccer players in Europe.
The 86-year-old Ladany hadn’t even mentioned that he completed a half-marathon 10 days before. There was too much else to tell the under-17 players from Chelsea, Bayern Munich, Maccabi Tel Aviv and other top-level clubs.
Eight teams representing five countries attended the Walther Bensemann Memorial Tournament in Nuremberg at the weekend. Chelsea beat Italian side Bologna 3-1 in Sunday’s final, but more importantly all players gained fresh perspectives on tolerance, equality and reconciliation by taking part in the competition.
Ladany is a two-time Olympian and was a member of the Israeli team targeted at the 1972 Munich Olympics by the Palestinian group Black September. Eleven Israelis were killed in the massacre.
Ladany had set the existing world record in the 50-mile walk earlier that year. He’s an engineer, a lecturer, a professor. He was 8 years old when he was brought to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. He survived.
“Any questions?” he asked the room full of players after speaking to them about his life for 90 minutes on Saturday.
There were none. Birds chirped happily outside, but there wasn’t a peep from the attentive players.
“If I was able, with my talks about what I went through and what I succeeded (in doing), to penetrate their brains, then I then I believe I was successful,” Ladany told The Associated Press. “Then I have really succeeded in doing what I should have done.”
Ladany also spoke to the players on Friday, when they gathered on the cobbled stone road outside Nuremberg Castle to be organized into groups for workshops, talks or excursions to learn more about the horrors perpetrated under the Nazi regime. Some were brought to see the infamous Nazi rally grounds nearby.
“It’s very important to remember what happened, and to say it loud, so it will not happen again,” Maccabi Tel Aviv team manager Leon Asraf told the AP. “Never. For us, for you, for everyone, all over the world.”
German clubs Eintracht Frankfurt, Nuremberg and Karlsruher SC, and Cracovia from Kraków in Poland, completed the lineup at the competition organized by Nie Wieder (Never Again) and Makkabi Germany with the backing of European soccer’s governing body UEFA.
But Ladany didn’t just speak of the past. He had advice for the players, too.
“Don’t look for monetary success,” Ladany said. “You should enjoy your sports and make your sports a way of life. Even then, after you reach your peak, stay in sports, for fun! ... Make it something that you love to do.”