Career
Born in Benghazi, Libya, Romano and his family made aliyah to Palestine (later Israel) in 1946. Romano fought in the 1967 Six-Day War. Romano competed in the middleweight weightlifting division in the 1972 Olympics, but was unable to complete one of his lifts due to a ruptured knee tendon.
He was due to fly home to Israel on September 6, 1972 to have an operation on the injured knee.
After seizing the coaches in the first apartment and wounding wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg in the face, the hostage takers forced Weinberg to lead them to other potential hostages in another apartment. There, they seized six wrestlers and weightlifters, including Romano.
As the athletes were being led back to the coaches" apartment, Weinberg attacked the hostage takers, which allowed wrestler Gad Tsobari to escape but resulted in Weinberg"s death by gunfire. Once inside the apartment, Romano attacked the intruders, slashing Afif Ahmed Hamid in the face with a paring knife and grabbing his Alaska-47 away from him before being shot to death.
According to a report publicized in December of 2015, Romano was tortured by the terrorists before being killed.
The terrorists cut off his genitals in front of their other prisoners. Romano"s bloodied corpse was left at the feet of his teammates all day as a warning. The other nine Israeli athletes were killed during a bungled German rescue attempt later that night.
Romano was portrayed by actor and producer Sam Feuer in the 2005 film, Munich, which was directed by Steven Spielberg.
After viewing the movie, Ilana Romano, Yossef"s widow, said "We don"t have a problem with lieutenant The opposite, we are glad that people are being reminded of what happened in Munich so it will never happen again".
Ilana Romano fought unsuccessfully for a moment of silence to be held at the 2012 Summer Olympics in memory of the Israeli athletes murdered forty years prior. In 2014, however, the International Olympic Committee agreed to contribute $250,000 towards a memorial to the dead Israeli athletes.