32 year old Fabien Gilot swims at the Olympic Games for Team France. He has picked up a few medals in his Olympic career which started with the 2004 Games in Athens Greece. This week Fabien received his 3rd medal, a silver, for his role on the French men’s 4×100 freestyle relay team. He has a gold and another silver medal from previous games. He won the gold in the 2012 London Games when the French men’s 4×100 relay team beat the US team.
Every time that Fabien raises his arms in victory, spectators catch a glimpse of his tribute to his grandfather, Max Goldschmidt. Mr Goldschmidt was a Jewish man from Berlin who survived the holocaust at the Auchwitz Nazi concentration camp. Max Goldschmidt was Fabien’s grandfather by marriage, as he was Fabien’s grandmother’s second husband. Fabien was very close to his grandfather and he considers him a hero.
On Fabien’s inner left arm is a tatoo inscribed in Hebrew. It says, Ani Klum Biladeihem (אני כלום בלעדיהם) which translated means, “I am nothing without them.” His grandfather died in early 2012 before he could see Fabien’s team place second in the relay and Fabien revealed his tribute to his grandfather at those London Games games. The 2012 Games were also the 40th anniversary of the massacre of members of the Israeli Olympic team to the 1972 Munich Games.
The main photo is from thejc.com. Facts for the story were gathered from HuffPost and Forward.com.