David Berger National Memorial

One of the smallest units of the National Park Service is this sculpture dedicated to the memory of David Berger.  Mr. Berger was one of the eleven Israeli athletes and coaches taken hostage and subsequently murdered by Palestinian terrorists during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.  We visited the site just a few days after the 40th anniversary of the massacre.  

From some angles, the sculpture is dark and foreboding

Mr. Berger grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and was a scholar as well as a weightlifter.  While earning a bachelor's degree in psychology at Tulane, he won the NCAA weightlifting title in his weight class.  He also earned an MBA and a law degree from Columbia University.  He emigrated to Israel with plans to open a law office in Tel Aviv.  The sculpture by David E. Davis was commissioned in 1973 by friends of Mr. Berger.  Congress designated it as a national memorial on March 5, 1980.

Quoting from the plaque mounted nearby:

A monument in the memory of David Berger stands as both a reminder of violence and a hope that man will one day overcome violence.  The Olympic emblem of five inter-locking rings has been broken to symbolize the stopping of the '72 Games.  But there is an upward motion in the broken rings to suggest the peaceful intent of the Olympics, a search for understanding and hope for the future.  The ten semicircles rest on eleven steel segments representing the eleven who died at Munich.  One of the segments is slightly different from the rest to symbolize the unique events in David's life that led him to the Israeli Olympic Team and to his death.

Broken, but reaching out and up

Title Plaque

The unique pedestal is slightly tapered from top to bottom while the other ten are of uniform width.  The title plaque is also mounted on this pedestal.  The sculpture is on the grounds of the Mandel Jewish Community Center in Beachwood, Ohio.

The memorial website is http://www.nps.gov/dabe/index.htm.