With those three chilling words from ABC sports anchor Jim McKay, the worst news about the fate of 11 Israeli hostages at the Munich Olympics was delivered. Five decades later, it’s still hard to shake those images of a masked Palestinian terrorist hiding on the balcony of the Olympic Village. It is still hard to understand how absurd and unnecessary it all was. And then there are those left behind, to live a life filled with pain in their hearts and questions that can never be answered about why it happened and what might have been. Like the family of David Berger, a Jewish American weightlifter who joined the Israeli team to pursue his dreams and ended up murdered. He was only 28. “We were six years apart,” his sister, Barbara Berger, recalled by phone Friday night from her home in Maine. “But the year before he died, I spent the summer with him in Israel. He was funny, headstrong, focused and incredibly smart.” When Barbara had a son, she named him after her brother. “He looks just like David,” Barbara said, a hint of admiration in her voice. “He reminds me so much of my brother. His personality, his looks. I feel good about it. I feel that my brother is alive.” The 50th anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack ever to hit the world of sport is on Monday. A memorial service will be held in Munich, attended by the presidents of both Germany and Israel. There will also be a ceremony Tuesday at the Mandel Jewish Community Center in Cleveland, home to the David Berger National Memorial, a poignant steel tribute depicting the five Olympic rings, each of them broken in half but pointing upward, toward another peaceful world. Berger was a Cleveland native who went to high school in Shaker Heights. “I can say that David Berger is very much alive in our community,” said Traci Felder, chief development officer for downtown Cleveland. “As a person, he was about dedication and commitment, not just to sports but to education as well.” Felder pointed to Berger’s lasting legacy through an educational endowment created by his mother and father. Over the past five decades, the tragic events in Munich have been remembered with documentaries and films, with plaques and memorials and finally, just last year, with a minute’s silence at the Tokyo Games. They have also led to a more closed world in our stadiums and arenas, with security costs now representing a huge chunk of the budget for any city wishing to host the Summer or Winter Games. Of course, there is no way we can completely shut down those who would do harm to others – especially in the high-profile scene that sports offers – in pursuit of their perverse goals. A bombing at the Boston Marathon in 2013 left three dead. Three were killed in the 2010 attack on a bus carrying Togo’s national soccer team to a major African tournament. In 2009, terrorists opened fire on the Sri Lankan cricket team en route to a match in Pakistan, killing half a dozen police officers and two civilians, and injuring six Sri Lankan players. I was watching the aftermath of another horrific attack. In 1996, while working in a media center next to Centennial Olympic Park, a bomb exploded at the center of the Atlanta Summer Games. One person was killed in the explosion. another later died of a heart attack. It could have been much, much worse. It was bad enough as it was. “I felt the ground shake,” Desmond Edwards, an Atlanta teacher who witnessed the explosion, told me as he left the scene that chaotic night. “There were rivers of blood.” Unfortunately, 50 years on from Munich, we still live in a world of rivers of blood and many of the same grievances that led to the massacre of the Olympic Games. “I don’t think anything good came out of it, given the state of the world today,” Barbara Berger said. “One can hope, but actually I think things are worse.” He then utters the saddest words from someone who has lost a loved one: “I’d say he died in vain.” Even more disappointing, recognition of the carnage and the many mistakes that allowed it to happen moved inexcusably slowly among those in power. It took 49 years for the International Olympic Committee to recognize Munich with something as simple as that brief moment of silence during the Tokyo opening ceremony. Just this week, the families of those 11 Israeli victims finally reached an agreement with the German government over a long-disputed compensation claim, averting a threatened boycott of Monday’s ceremony. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his Israeli counterpart, Isaac Herzog, welcomed the long-delayed deal, which is reportedly worth around $28 million. “The agreement cannot heal all wounds. But it opens a door to each other,” the leaders said in a joint statement. Again, the pact came after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas refused to condemn the 50-year-old massacre at the Olympics. He countered that it could point to Israel’s “50 Holocausts.” In the midst of political supremacy, we lose sight of individual anguish on all sides. The family that has an empty seat at their table. The guilt-ridden survivor. The passer-by who can never forget what he saw. Fifty years ago, Barbara Berger was in Munich with another sibling, Fred, to watch their brother compete. He remembers asking David to come stay with them after he finished, but he wanted to stay with his Israeli teammates. He also remembers the lack of security that allowed them to visit David in the athletes’ village. But Barbara refuses to get caught up in the what-ifs. She saw it eat away at her parents for the rest of their lives. “It’s a complete waste of emotion,” he said. “I have enough self-discipline not to go there. There’s no reason to.” Fifty years later, none of this seems to make sense. However, we carry on, doing our best to keep their names alive. David Berger. Zeev Friedman. Joseph Gutfreund. Eliezer Halfin. Joseph Romano. Mark Slavin. Amitzur Shapira. Kehat Sor. Andre Spitzer. Jacob Springer. Moshe Weinberg. Hopefully, their very short lives will someday inspire us to be better people, a better world. There is still time.
Paul Newberry is a national sports columnist for the Associated Press. Email him at [email protected] or on Twitter @pnewberry1963
