Yossef Romano

Yossef Romano (Hebrew: יוסף רומנו; 15 April 1940 – 5 September 1972), also known as Joseph or Yossi Romano, was a Libyan-born Israeli weightlifter who competed for Israel at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, where he became one of eleven Israeli team members murdered by Palestinian terrorists from the Black September organization during the Munich massacre. Born in Benghazi, Libya, Romano emigrated with his family to Mandatory Palestine as a child and later became a nine-time Israeli national champion in the light- and middleweight weightlifting classes. A father of three, he was the first victim killed in the attack after reportedly resisting the intruders by fighting one of them, sustaining stab wounds to the chest before being shot; his body was subsequently mutilated by the terrorists.

Yossef Romano was born on 15 April 1940 in Benghazi, Libya, to a Jewish family amid a period of rising tensions for North African Jewish communities under Italian colonial rule and subsequent instability.

In 1946, at the age of six, Romano's family emigrated from Libya to Mandatory Palestine, settling in the region that became the State of Israel three years later, as part of the broader exodus of Libyan Jews fleeing anti-Semitic pogroms and political upheaval following World War II.