Along with those three chilling words from ABC sportscaster Jim McKay, the worst possible news was delivered on the fate of the 11 Israeli hostages at the Munich Olympics.
Five decades later, those images of a masked Palestinian terrorist lurking on the balcony of the Olympic Village are still hard to shake. It’s still hard to see how absurd and unnecessary all this was.
And then there are some who get left behind, to live a life full of hurt in their hearts and questions that can never be answered as to why this happened and what could have happened.
Like the family of David Berger, a Jewish American weightlifter who joins the Israeli team in pursuit of his dreams and is murdered.
He was only 28 years old.
“We were six years apart,” his sister, Barbara Berger, recalled Friday evening by telephone from her home in Maine. “But the year before his death, I had spent a summer with him in Israel. He was witty, and stubborn, and goal-oriented, and incredibly intelligent.”
When Barbara had a son, she named him after her brother.
“He looks exactly like David,” said Barbara, a hint of wonder in her voice. “He reminds me a lot of my brother. His personality, his looks. I love that about it. It’s like my brother is alive.”
Monday is the 50th anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack ever on the sports world.
There will be a commemoration in Munich, which will be attended by the presidents of both Germany and Israel.
There will also be a ceremony Tuesday at the Mandel Jewish Community Center in Cleveland, site of the David Berger National Memorial, a heartwarming steel tribute that depicts five Olympic rings, each of them broken in half, but pointed upwards. while, towards a more peaceful world.
Berger was a Cleveland native who went to high school in Shaker Heights.
“All I can say is that David Berger is very much alive in our community,” said Tracey Felder, the Cleveland Center’s chief development officer. “As a person, he was all about dedication and commitment not only to sport but to education.”
Felder pointed to Berger’s enduring legacy through an education endowment established by his mother and father.
Over the past five decades, the tragic events in Munich have been commemorated with documentaries and films, with plaques and memorials, and finally, last year, with the moment of silence at the Tokyo Games.
They also led to a more locked-down world in our stadiums and arenas, with security costs now a huge part of the budget for any city that wants to host the Summer or Winter Games.
Of course, there’s no chance of completely shutting down those who harm others – especially on the high-profile platform that the game offers – in pursuit of their perverse goals.
a bombing in 2013
Three people died in the marathon. In 2010, three people were killed in an attack on a bus carrying the Togo national football team to a major African tournament. In 2009, terrorists opened fire on a Sri Lankan cricket team on their way to a match in Pakistan, resulting in the death of half a dozen police officers and two civilians, while injuring six Sri Lankan players.
I saw after another gruesome attack.
In 1996, while working at a media center adjacent to Centennial Olympic Park, a bomb exploded at the epicenter of the Atlanta Summer Games. One person died in the explosion; The other later died of a heart attack.
It could have been very, very bad.
It was bad as it was.
“I felt the ground shaking,” Desmond Edwards, an Atlanta schoolteacher who told me as he fled the scene that chaotic night. “There were rivers of blood.”
Sadly, 50 years after Munich, we still live in a world where there are rivers of blood and many of the same grievances that led to the Olympic massacre.
Barbara Berger said, “I don’t think anything good has come out of it given the state of the world today.” “One can hope, but I really think things are worse.”
Then she says the saddest possible words to someone who lost a loved one: “I would say he died in vain.”
Even more disheartening, the recognition of the genocide and the many mistakes it allowed to happen, proceeded at an unforgivably slow pace among those in power.
It took the International Olympic Committee 49 years to so simply accept Munich as that brief moment of silence during Tokyo’s opening ceremony.
Just this week, the families of those 11 Israeli victims finally settled with Germany’s government over a long-disputed compensation claim, threatening to boycott Monday’s ceremony.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his Israeli counterpart, Isaac Herzog, welcomed the long-pending agreement, which is reportedly worth around $28 million.
“Agreement cannot heal all wounds. But it does open doors for each other,” the leaders said in a joint statement.
The agreement was struck again after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas refused to condemn the 50-year-old Olympic massacre. He countered that he could point to “50 holocausts” by Israel.
In the midst of political grandeur, we lose sight of the individual suffering on all sides.
The family that has an empty seat at the dinner table. Survivor who is haunted by guilt. The viewer who will never forget what he saw.
Fifty years ago, Barbara Berger was in Munich with another brother, Fred, to see her brother compete. He remembers that he had asked David to stay with him, but he wanted to be with his Israeli comrades. She also remembers the weak security that allowed her to meet David at the Athletes’ Village.
But Barbara refuses to get caught up in the what-ifs. He saw it eating his parents’ whole life.
“It’s a total waste of emotions,” she said. “I have enough self-discipline not to go there. There’s no point.”
Fifty years later, it doesn’t seem to make sense.
Yet we try our best to keep his name alive.
David Berger.
Zeev Friedman.
Yosef Gutfreund.
Eliezer Halfin.
Joseph Romano.
Mark Slavin.
Amitjur Shapira.
Why the noise
Andre Spitzer.
Yaakov Springer.
Moshe Weinberg.
Hopefully, his very short life will someday inspire us to be a better person, a better world.
there’s still time.
