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Ankie Spitzer, widow of the murdered fencing coach André Spitzer, in her home near Tel Aviv
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Jonas Opperskalski / Jonas Opperskalski / laif
The surviving relatives of the victims of the 1972 Olympic attack do not want to come to an official memorial service in Munich on the 50th anniversary.
The reason is the unresolved issue of compensation by the German government.
Ankie Spitzer, spokeswoman for the victims' families, confirmed this to SPIEGEL on Thursday.
"We heard from the Israeli President's office that Germany will not increase its offer," said Spitzer.
"That's why we finally decided not to come to the ceremony in Munich." Spitzer explained that she had sent a letter to Bavaria's Prime Minister Markus Söder, who was hosting the ceremony.
"I explained to him that we weren't coming and that we wouldn't accept what he was putting in the donation pot." Bayern wanted to give one million euros to all families.
“After 50 years.
For real?
We don't accept that and we don't come.
That's final," says Spitzer.
Flight and hotel rooms were canceled.
The government apparently offered ten million euros – minus previous payments
Ankie Spitzer is the widow of fencing coach André Spitzer, who was murdered in 1972, and represents the interests of the bereaved together with Ilana Romano, widow of Israeli weightlifter Yossef Romano.
The families are now thinking about new steps, said Spitzer.
'By the way, we were invited by the British Parliament to come to London on September 5th, where they are holding a memorial service for our eleven athletes who were murdered.
It's surreal, but that's the way it is."
The federal government declared two weeks ago that it intended to pay the victims' families late compensation half a century after the attack on the Israeli Olympic team, as a result of a "reassessment" of the attack and its consequences.
The government did not name a specific amount.
According to information from the families of the victims, it should be a total of ten million euros for all survivors.
However, earlier payments from 1972 and 2002 totaling around four and a half million euros should be taken into account.
Spitzer described the offer as "insulting."
When Palestinian terrorists attacked at the Summer Olympics in Munich on September 5 and 6, 1972, eleven Israeli athletes and supervisors and a German policeman were killed.
Two members of the team from Israel were murdered in the Olympic Village, the others died during a failed liberation operation at the Fürstenfeldbruck airfield.
It later became known that the German authorities had, among other things, neglected previous warnings of a possible terrorist action and had made numerous fatal mistakes during the attempted hostage rescue.
»Money from the state would have been tantamount to an admission of guilt«
A few weeks ago, the families of the Israeli victims announced that they would stay away from the official commemoration if the question of compensation remained unresolved.
"If they don't even pay us compensation according to international standards, we won't come at all," Ankie Spitzer told SPIEGEL.
Over the past 50 years, the victims' families have repeatedly complained about the inadequate processing of the events and the non-release of investigation files;
In addition, no one on the German side ever apologized for the failure of the authorities in the course of the hostage-taking.
Volker Beck, President of the German-Israeli Society, as well as the Greens parliamentary group in the Bundestag and Ludwig Spaenle (CSU), the Bavarian government's anti-Semitism commissioner, had recently pushed for appropriate compensation and a complete investigation.
The relatives have received money twice so far.
Ankie Spitzer puts the amount of the first payment in 1972 at one million marks for 34 surviving dependents - but »not from Germany, but from the Red Cross, because money from the state would have been tantamount to an admission of guilt«.
In court, the surviving dependents demanded 40 million marks in damages from 1994 because of massive errors in the police operation, but their lawsuit was ultimately dismissed in 2000 - due to the statute of limitations.
Another payment of around 3.2 million euros followed two years later as a “humanitarian gesture” by the Federal Republic, as the Federal Government, the Free State of Bavaria and the City of Munich explained at the time.
The majority was spent on legal costs, 920,000 euros remained for 34 relatives, said Spitzer.
