1972 Summer Olympics medal table invitation and threatened to boycott the Games. Three days before the opening ceremonies the IOC voted to rescind their invitation and exclude the Rhodesian athletes. The Games were largely overshadowed by what has come to be known as the Munich massacre. On September 5 a group of eight Palestinian terrorists belonging to the Black September Organization broke into the Olympic Village and took nine Israeli athletes, coaches and officials hostage in their apartments. Two of the hostages who resisted were killed in the first moments of the break-in; the subsequent standoff in the Olympic Village lasted for almost 18 hours.
David Berger National Memorial David Berger National Memorial David Berger National Memorial honors the memory of David Mark Berger, a 28-year-old U.S.-born Israeli weightlifter who was one of 11 Israeli athletes killed by Palestinian terrorists in the Munich massacre at the 1972 Summer Olympics. The memorial is dedicated to his memory and to the memory of the ten other athletes who were killed. The black steel sculpture, a design of broken Olympic rings, is meant to symbolize the interruption of the Munich games by the tragic events, and the eleven segments on which the rings rest represent each athlete whose life was taken. The