Famed
ABC Sportscaster Opens JCC Maccabi Games®
At 4:30 a.m. September
5, 1972, nine hooded terrorists entered the Munich Olympic
Village and captured nine Israeli athletes to hold as hostages.
At 9:30, the terrorists announced that they were Palestinians
and demanded that Israel release 200 Arab prisoners, and they
insisted that the terrorists be given safe passage out of
Germany. At 3:00 the next morning, ABC’s Olympic coverage
announced, “They’re all gone.” Eleven members
of the Israeli team had been killed by the Arab terrorists.
“Saying the words, ’They're all gone’ was
the hardest thing I had to do in television,” Jim McKay,
anchor for the 1972 Olympic Games, later said.
In 1968, Jim McKay
became the first sports commentator ever to win an Emmy Award.
Since then, he has won 12 more, including one for his news
reporting of the tragic events surrounding the Black September
terrorists’ attack on the Olympic Village in Munich.
Year after year,
the JCC Maccabi Games®, the multi-site Olympic-style event
for Jewish teens, honor and remember the Munich 11 athletes.
This year, Anouk Spitzer, the daughter of Andre Spitzer, the
Israel fencing coach killed in what we now know to be the
start of modern-day terrorism, will join with Jim McKay to
light the JCC Maccabi Torch, symbolizing the beginning of
the JCC Maccabi Games in Rockville, MD. Anouk was five weeks
old at the time of her father's murder. “I was both
honored and moved to learn that the memory of my father and
the other Israeli athletes are kept alive at every JCC Maccabi
Games opening ceremonies. I am touched that people are willing
to do something in their honor. And [how] better than at an
event that combines sport and Jews!”
-###-
The JCC Maccabi
Games are a program run by JCC Association. JCC Association
is the leadership network of, and central agency for the Jewish
Community Center Movement, which is comprised of more than
300 JCCs, YM-YWHAs and camps in the U. S. and Canada. JCC
Association offers a wide range of services and resources
to strengthen the capacity of its affiliates to provide educational,
cultural, social, Jewish identity-building, and recreational
programs to enhance the lives of North American Jews of all
ages and backgrounds. Additionally, the movement fosters and
strengthens connections between North American Jews and Israel
as well as with world Jewry. JCC Association is also the U.S.
government accredited agency for serving the religious and
social needs of Jewish military personnel, their families,
and patients in VA hospitals through JWB Jewish Chaplains
Council. JCC Association is the managing partner of the JCC
Maccabi Games, and operates in conjunction with Maccabi World
Union (Israel), Maccabi USA/Sports for Israel, and Maccabi
Canada, which together represent over 1.5 million members
worldwide.
Rachel
Friedman
Marketing Associate
JCC Association
phone: 212-786-5096
fax: 212-481-4174
send an e-mail
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