German City of Munich Launches Year-Long Tribute to Israeli Athletes Murdered by Palestinian Terrorists at 1972 Olympics
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by Algemeiner Staff
The entrance to Amerikahaus in Munich is illuminated with a tribute to David Berger, one of eleven Israeli athletes murdered by Palestinian terrorists at the Olympic Games in the city in 1972. Photo: Amerikahaus, Munich
The city of Munich has held the first of 150 events this year that will commemorate the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games there fifty years ago.
On Thursday, a visual installation in memory of one of the murdered athletes, David Berger, illuminated the facade of the Amerikahaus, an institution in Munich that works to enhance transatlantic relations.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, weightlifter Berger — a dual American-Israeli citizen — was killed on the tarmac of the Fürstenfeldbruck airbase during a botched attempt by the West German authorities to rescue the remaining Israeli athletes who were taken hostage inside the Olympic compound by Palestinian terrorists from the Black September organization in Sept. 1972.
Commemoration of the fate of the Israeli athletes would be an “integral part” of the 50th anniversary activities in Munich this year, the city’s mayor, Dieter Reiter, said on Thursday.
Paying tribute to the murdered Israelis would be a sign “that Munich is a city that rejects antisemitism, hatred and racism, and actively takes action against it,” Reiter said, in comments quoted by the Judische Allgemeine news outlet.
The Israeli athletes were taken hostage by a unit of Black September terrorists on Sept. 4, 1972, as the Olympic Games in Munich entered their second week. After returning to the Olympic village in the evening, the athletes accommodation was stormed by eight armed terrorists. Two of the eleven athletes — weightlifter Yossi Romano and wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg — were brutally murdered in the apartment where the athletes resided. The remaining nine lost their lives at Fürstenfeldbruck the following day, when the terrorists, realizing they had been lured into a trap during negotiations with the West German police, murdered the remaining hostages in a spray of machine gun fire.
