GENEVA: She escaped the bombs of Syria, and almost drowned when her dinghy capsized off Greece, but Yusra Mardini then competed at the Olympics and has now been appointed a UN goodwill ambassador to be a voice for people seeking shelter from war.
Mardini had to swim for hours after capsizing in the Mediterranean with her sister. They saved 20 people who eventually reached the Greek island of Lesbos.
Granted refugee status by Germany, she swam at the Games last August as one of 10 athletes in the first-ever refugee Olympic team which she hopes will become a permanent fixture.
“I am grateful for this opportunity and platform to tell the world that whilst we are young ... we have already experienced horrors, loved and lost homes, friends and family as if we have lived 100 years,” Mardini told a news conference on Thursday.
Mardini, 19, is still studying in Berlin, continuing her swimming training two to three hours a day and learning German, but will go soon on a UNHCR mission to Tokyo, venue of the 2020 Summer Games.
“Of course I’m really hoping that in the next Olympics there will be a new refugee Olympic team, and I am sure that all the world is supporting that because it was a really good idea,” she said.
UN Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees Kelly Clements said plans for that were not finalized.
Mardini, whose appearance in Rio served to highlight the refugee crisis to a global audience, said in her new role she wanted to show people: “that refugees are actually humans and normal people also, who can do a lot of things like them.”
Syrian refugee Olympic swimmer becomes UNHCR ambassador
Syrian refugee Olympic swimmer becomes UNHCR ambassador
Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s memoir recounts her journey after her son’s abduction by Hamas
- Random House announced Thursday that “When We See You Again” will be published April 26
- “I sat down to write my pain, and out poured loss, suffering, love, mourning, devotion, grief, adoration and fracturedness,” Goldberg-Polin said
NEW YORK: Rachel Goldberg-Polin, who has become known worldwide for her advocacy on behalf of her son and others abducted by Hamas-led militants on Oct. 7, 2023, has a memoir coming out this spring.
Random House, an imprint of Penguin Random House, announced Thursday that “When We See You Again” will be published April 26.
“I sat down to write my pain, and out poured loss, suffering, love, mourning, devotion, grief, adoration and fracturedness,” Goldberg-Polin, a Chicago-born educator who now lives in Jerusalem, said in a statement. “This book recounts the first steps of a million-mile odyssey that will take the rest of my life to walk on shattered feet.”
Goldberg-Polin also will narrate the audio edition of “When We See You Again.”
Her son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was attending a southern Israel music festival when militants loaded him and other hostages onto the back of a pickup truck. Rachel Goldberg-Polin and her husband, Jon, traveled the world calling for the release of Hersh and others, meeting with President Joe Biden and Pope Francis, speaking at the United Nations and appearing at protest rallies. Each morning, she would write down on a piece of masking tape the number of days her son had been in captivity and stick it on her chest.
She continued her efforts after Israeli officials announced in September 2024 that the bodies of her son and five others had been found in an underground tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip. Israeli forensics experts said they had been shot at close range. Tens of thousands crowded into a Jerusalem cemetery as Hersh was laid to rest.
According to Random House, Rachel Goldberg-Polin will tell her story in “raw, unflinching, deeply moving prose.”
“She describes grief from within the midst of suffering, giving voice to the broken as she pours her pain, love, and longing onto the page,” announcement reads in part. “It is a story of how we remember and how we persevere, of how we suffer and how we love.”
