At the Summer Olympics in Munich on September 5, 1972, Palestinian terrorists ambushed Israel's team and took hostages. They murdered eleven athletes and coaches. Two team members were killed in the Olympic village, the others died during an unsuccessful liberation operation at the Fürstenfeldbruck airfield. The German policeman Anton Fliegerbauer also died there.
While the "cheerful games" survived in the collective memory of the Germans, the relatives in Israel are still fighting for the memory of the dead. Here are their stories.
David Mark Berger
was born in Ohio in 1944, the son of a doctor.
He is the eldest of three siblings.
Still small and slight at the time, he started lifting weights at the age of 13.
Although he was already successful in his youth, his only interest is by no means only in sports: he first studied psychology and economics at the elite universities of Tulane in New Orleans and Columbia in New York, before earning his doctorate in law.
At the same time, he promotes his sports career.
In 1969 he won gold at the Maccabiah, the Jewish World Games, and in 1971 he won silver at the Asian Championships.
In 1970 he emigrated to Israel - perhaps also to improve his chances of taking part in the Olympics.
He gets engaged to an Israeli student and wants to set up a law firm in Tel Aviv after his military service.
When he is nominated for the games, a big dream comes true for him.
But Berger is eliminated early in the competition.
He dies when Palestinian terrorists take hostages on September 6 at the Fürstenfeldbruck airfield.
He is the only one of the victims who is not buried in Israel, but in his hometown of Shaker Heights in the USA.
David Berger was 28 years old.
Zeev Friedman
was born in 1944 in Prokopevsk, Siberia, in what was then the Soviet Union, after his parents had fled there from the Nazis.
After the war, the family wanted to go straight to Palestine, but entry requirements were still strictly regulated at the time.
It was not until 1960 that the family was able to emigrate to Israel with him and his sister via Poland and settled near Haifa.
There, the multi-talented athlete first started with gymnastics and athletics before concentrating on weightlifting.
He becomes a multiple Israeli champion and starts working as a sports teacher on the side.
In 1971 he won the silver medal at the Asian Games in Manila.
He is also hoping for a medal in Munich – it would have been Israel's first ever Olympic medal – but ended the bantam competition in 12th place.
He also dies in the hostage-taking at the Fürstenfeldbruck airfield.
Zeev Friedman was 28 years old.
Josef Gutfreund
was born in Romania in 1931.
As a child, he, his sister and his parents survive the Holocaust because they can hide in Romania and Hungary.
After the war he emigrated to Israel at the age of 17 and served in the Israeli army during the Six Day War.
He first begins studying to become a veterinarian and then opens an electronics store in Jerusalem.
He also works as a wrestling coach.
In Munich he is the first to notice the terrorists.
He braces himself against the door to prevent her from entering the apartment, his shouting wakes the other athletes.
It's the crucial seconds that allow weightlifter Tuvia Sokolovsky to escape.
Gutfreund is captured with the others and dies during the hostage-taking at the Fürstenfeldbruck airfield.
Josef Gutfreund was 40 years old.
He left behind his wife and two daughters.
Eliezer Halfin
was born in Riga, Soviet Union, in 1948.
He and his sister grew up as children of Holocaust survivors.
He started wrestling at the age of ten.
The family tried for years to follow relatives to Israel, in 1969 they succeeded.
Halfin joins Hapoel Tel Aviv and achieves first international top rankings.
Only a few months before the Olympic Games does he receive Israeli citizenship and qualify for the competitions, while also completing an apprenticeship as a car mechanic.
Shortly before leaving, he proposes marriage to his girlfriend.
In Munich, he loses in the third round in the lightweight division and then stays in the Olympic village to support his colleagues.
He dies during the unsuccessful rescue attempt at the Fürstenfeldbruck airfield.
Eliezer Halfin was 24 years old.
Josef Romano
was born in 1940 in Benghazi, Libya, into a large Jewish family.
When he was six years old, the family fled to Palestine because of anti-Semitic riots.
He starts weightlifting in Tel Aviv.
In Herzliya he completes an apprenticeship as an interior decorator and meets his wife.
In 1967 he fought for Israel in the Six Day War.
Ten times in a row he is Israeli middleweight champion.
But his competition in Munich was unfortunate: he injured himself in the first discipline, the press, badly on his knee, and can no longer compete in the clean and jerk.
He wants to fly home on September 6th to have an operation.
It doesn't come to that: when the Palestinian kidnappers break into the Israeli apartments, Romano, who walks on crutches, fights back and tries to get hold of a weapon belonging to the attackers.
The terrorists shoot.
Romano collapses, injured by several bullets, and bleeds to death in front of his teammates over the next few hours.
Josef Romano was 32 years old.
He left behind his wife and three daughters.
Amitzur Shapira
was born in Tel Aviv in 1932, where his parents had immigrated during one of the great waves of immigration from the Soviet Union.
He started athletics at an early age and developed into one of the most successful sprinters in the country.
After studying psychology, education, literature and sports, he first became a sports teacher and trainer in Tel Aviv before moving to the Wingate Institute in Netanya.
There he becomes the head coach of Israel's track and field athletes.
In Munich he looks after the hurdles sprinter Esther Shachamorov.
After his death, however, she no longer competes in her run.
The trainer dies during the hostage-taking at the Fürstenfeldbruck airfield.
Amitzur Shapira was 40 years old.
He left behind his wife and four children.
Four years later, at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, his runner Esther Shachamorov became the first Israeli athlete to reach an Olympic final in the 100-meter hurdles.
Kehat Shorr
was born in Podu Iloaiei, Romania, in 1919.
Hidden in the Carpathians, he survives the Holocaust.
He became a well-known marksman in his home country and emigrated to Israel with his family in 1963, where he joined Hapoel Tel Aviv.
He first becomes a club and then a national coach.
The games in Munich are his second after the ones in Mexico. Here he looks after the two shooters Zelig Shtorch and Henry Herskowitz.
On the morning of September 5, Shorr is captured along with ten other team members.
His two charges, housed in Apartment 2, which remains unmolested by the terrorists, escape the kidnapping and survive.
He himself dies during the unsuccessful liberation action by the German police at the Fürstenfeldbruck airfield.
Kehat Shorr was 53 years old.
He left behind his wife and a grown daughter.
Mark Slavin
was born in Minsk, Soviet Union, in 1954.
He attends a sports school, is trained as a wrestler and celebrates his first successes as a teenager in the Soviet Union.
But because of increasing anti-Semitism, the family decides to leave the country and arrives in Israel three months before the 1972 Olympic Games.
Slavin immediately receives citizenship in order to be able to represent Israel in Munich - these are his first international competitions.
He's just starting to learn Hebrew.
September 5 would have been his first day of competition in the Graeco-Roman middleweight division.
He also dies at the Fürstenfeldbruck airfield.
Mark Slavin was only 18 years old.
André Spitzer
was born a few weeks after the German surrender in 1945, the son of Holocaust survivors in Romania.
His father dies when he is still a child.
He emigrated to Israel with his mother.
From an early age he was enthusiastic about fencing.
When he traveled to the Netherlands in 1968 for further training at a sports school, he met his future wife Ankie, who was also a fencer.
At their wedding in 1971 in The Hague, fencer friends stood guard.
A year later, two months before the Olympic Games, their daughter Anouk was born.
His wife initially accompanies him to Munich.
Then she stays with her daughter in the Netherlands with her parents-in-law and has to watch the kidnapping on September 5 on television.
André Spitzer dies in the unsuccessful liberation operation at the Fürstenfeldbruck airfield.
His two athletes, Yehuda Weinstain and Dan Alon, who are housed in another apartment, escape being taken hostage.
André Spitzer was 27 years old.
His widow Ankie, together with Josef Romano's widow Ilana, became the spokeswoman for the bereaved and is still fighting for reappraisal, commemoration and appropriate compensation.
Yakov Springer
was born in Kalisz, Poland, in 1921.
While his parents and siblings are being murdered in the Holocaust, he manages to escape to the Soviet Union.
When he studied sports in Warsaw after the war, he excelled in wrestling and weightlifting.
In 1956 he emigrated to Israel with his wife and two children because of growing anti-Semitism.
He works as a physical education teacher in Bat Yam and also trains weightlifters at the Jaffa community center.
He eventually becomes the national team coach and referee.
The Olympic Games in Munich are already his fifth.
He dies at the Fürstenfeldbruck airfield.
Yakov Springer was 51 years old.
He left behind his wife, a son and a daughter.
Moshe Weinberg
was born in Haifa, Israel, in 1939.
After his parents separated, he grew up with his grandparents.
He discovered his enthusiasm for wrestling early on and joined Hapoel Haifa.
Eight years in a row he is youth champion and Israeli champion among adults.
In 1965 he won gold at the Maccabiad.
After his military service, he finally became a trainer at the Wingate Institute in Netanya and looked after the wrestlers Eliezer Halfin and Mark Slavin in Munich.
When Palestinian terrorists take hostages, he is injured right at the beginning in the Israeli quarters and then, when he resists, shot down.
He is the first victim of the hostage situation.
Moshe Weinberg was 32 years old.
He left behind his wife and a five-week-old son.
The family emigrated to the United States, where his son became an actor.
Guri Weinberg played his father in Steven Spielberg's Hollywood drama »Munich« (2005).
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