A United States Senator and a Justice of Israel’s Supreme Court joined 800 Clevelanders in a memorial ceremony for Cleveland-born David Berger, one of 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team murdered by Arab terrorists at Munich on Sept, 5, 1972. An original sculpture by David Davis depicting the tragedy was dedicated last Sunday in memory of Berger who was 28-years-old at the time of his death.
Sen. Hubert Humphrey (D. Minn,) lauded Berger as representative of the best America anti Israel had to offer, typical of those who “year for peace, who prefer competition on the playing field to that on the battlefield.” Referring to the perpetrators of the Munich massacre. Humphrey declared that to recognize the Palestine Liberation Organization “is to condone terrorism and violence…the PLO has no role in our plans for peace until it is willing to accept peaceful means as a principle of its existence.”
Israeli Supreme Court Justice Haim Cohen said: “Our own grief is aggravated by a feeling of identification with the murdered…but the message of this beautiful sculpture is not one of revenge or brandishing swords. It is rather a message of the silence of the dead that fills our hearts with a dedication to peace and to a world of love and mutual understanding.”
Former Sen. Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio told the audience at the Jewish Community Center where the sculpture will be on display that eight couples, friends of the Berger family, organized the creation of the work and the public dedication ceremony.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
