August 22, 2008
Jewish Press, Omaha, NE
Page 7
Maccabiah bridge collapse survivor Israelis host Beijing ceremony to remember Munichthevictims beats the odds to reach Beijing by ALISON KLAYMAN Israeli government but also recalled
by DAN GOLDBERG SYDNEY, Australia (JTA) -- David Zalcberg has cheated death and defied his doctors to compete in Beijing. Zalcberg was 16, a rising Australian table tennis star, when he survived what he called the “horrendous experience” of the 1997 Maccabiah Games disaster. A footbridge collapsed, plunging him and the rest of the Australian team into the polluted waters of the Yarkon River. Four Australians died and scores were injured, including one of Zalcberg’s table tennis teammates, who broke both of his legs. Zalcberg would face more challenges. In 2006, during the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, the left-hander suffered a prolapsed disc, sending him to the sidelines for eight months. In January 2007, during his first training session, he crashed his bicycle and broke his arm in two places. “The doctors said I would never play again,” he told JTA on the eve of his departure for China. It wasn’t until mid-2007 that he began the long road to recovery. Last month he won the doubles championship at the Australian Open, with partner William Henzel, for the third time. Zalcberg, 27, says qualifying for Beijing was a bigger deal than competing at the Athens Olympics in 2004. “I feel very, very lucky,” he says. “The highlight of my career, for sure, would have to be qualifying for these Olympics.” Zalcberg is one of six table tennis players – three men and three women – from the Oceania region to reach Beijing. The top 64 players in the world qualify for the Olympics and compete in singles and a
Davis Cup-style team event, which begins Wednesday. He was the lone Australian Jewish athlete to make it to Beijing. Four qualified for Athens. Zalcberg, who grew up playing at Maccabi and has competed at the North American and Pan-American Maccabi Games, recognizes the irony of playing table tennis in China -- the overwhelming favorite to take the gold medal.
David Zalcberg in action at the Maccabi Pan Am Games in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in December 2007. Credit: Peter Haskin/Australian Jewish News “It’s ridiculous,” he said. “To the Chinese it’s the premier event; they are so good. They have 20 million players and we have 20 million people in the whole of Australia!” A graduate of Mount Scopus College, one of the largest Jewish schools in the country, Zalcberg just completed his medical degree and will begin working as a trainee doctor when he returns from China. Regardless of his medal chances, Zalcberg is grateful to be donning a green-and-gold jersey for his country. “I feel very lucky just to be able to get here,” he said. “This one’s pretty special.”
BEIJING (JTA) -- Hundreds of Israeli, Chinese and Olympic officials gathered Monday at the Hilton Beijing to commemorate the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Games. While it has become a longstanding tradition for the Israeli delegation to visit the memorial to the Munich victims in Tel Aviv on the eve of their departure for the Olympics, the tradition to hold a formal memorial ceremony during the Games only began at Sydney in 2000. The memorial is arranged by the Israeli Olympic Committee in conjunction with the local Israeli Embassy, but has never been incorporated as an official program under the International Olympic Committee, for which the Israelis have been pushing. The secretary-general of the Israeli Olympic Committee, Ephraim Zinger, opened the event by reading the names of the 11 athletes and coaches who were killed in the terrorist assassinations in Munich. Rabbi Shimon Freudlich of Chabad Beijing led the El-Maleh Rachamim prayer memorializing the dead. Fourteen members of the current Israeli delegation attended, as well as coaches and officials, all of whom had finished their competitions and were heading back to Israel the next day. “Part of their preparation is to learn and be aware of the heritage of our 11 slain athletes,” Zinger said. “All the athletes know and meet the families, and on the way to the Games they visit the memorial to the Munich victims in Tel Aviv. It is a part of their education.” Israel’s minister of science, culture and sport, Raleb Majadele, spoke on behalf of
having lost two close friends in the massacre. He said the proper way to honor the Munich tragedy was “to continue to train and to continue to participate in the Olympic Games, just as we are doing here in Beijing.” Others, however, took a more critical tone. Zvi Varshaviak, the president of the Israel Olympic Committee, called upon the International Olympic Committee to be involved directly in commemorating the Munich massacre. Zinger said the Israelis raise the issue at every meeting with the IOC, but without results. “Probably they are concerned about the reaction of those who will disagree with a memorial like this,” Zinger said. “There are 205 NOCs [national Olympic committees] participating in the Olympics, and there are more than a few dozen that will strongly disagree with this kind of event.” Ankie Schpitzer, whose husband, fencing referee Andrei Schpitzer, was killed in Munich, was one of the evening’s most powerful speakers in advocating for a wider memorial to be witnessed by all the world’s athletes. “This is not an Israeli issue, this concerns the whole Olympic family,” she said. “Our sons, fathers and husbands were no accidental tourists or visitors to the Games; they were part of it. They believed in the spirit and the dreams of the Olympics, but they all came home in a coffin.” “The overall mood of the night was that the IOC should recognize the 11 athletes who were murdered in 1972 as Olympic victims,” Zinger told JTA. “They were Israelis, yes, but they were Olympians.”
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“What the Olympics Mean To Human Rights In China” The Tenth Annual Shirley and Leonard Goldstein Lecture on Human Rights
Thursday, October 16, 2008 7:00 p.m. Dodge Room (Third Floor) UNO Milo Bail Student Center Public Welcome
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