Fifty years later, there are still many unanswered questions about the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. There is also much pain among the relatives of the victims, who continue to wonder how so many errors could have occurred in the rescue attempt of the 11 Olympic athletes. that a Palestinian terrorist group (Black September) took as hostages and ended up killing.
But the event has at least managed to close one chapter, that of the assumption of responsibilities by Germany, the country that organized those "games of peace and joy" that ended in the worst tragedy of Olympism.
For the first time, the German authorities have apologized and acknowledged their mistakes.
“I am ashamed,” German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in front of a grieving Israeli President Isaac Herzog during the commemoration event in Munich.
"I apologize, as head of state and on behalf of the Federal Republic of Germany, for failing to protect Israeli athletes and for the lack of subsequent information," he added, addressing relatives present at the event.
Some 70 affected finally went to the Fürstenfeldbruck air base, on the outskirts of the Bavarian capital, the scene of the bloodbath with which the disastrous police operation ended.
“It has been very exciting.
I am glad that the authorities have finally recognized their responsibility and openly talk about the mistakes.
It has been a great relief," Shlomit Romano, daughter of weightlifter Yossef Romano, told public television.
Portraits of the victims during the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Munich massacre, this Monday at the Fürstenfeldbruck air base.
THOMAS KIENZLE (AFP)
After many tugs of war – and under the threat of a boycott, which would have completely tarnished the act by not having relatives of the victims – an agreement was reached last week.
Berlin will pay 28 million euros (around 1.2 million for each of the 23 families entitled to compensation)
for his responsibility in the attack.
For the first time, the German state acknowledges that serious mistakes were made that led to the death of the 11 Israeli athletes.
The German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, assured that Germany has taken too long to be aware of its responsibility and to act accordingly.
It is “shameful”, he admitted, that it took five decades to reach a compensation agreement with the families.
“For too long we have not wanted to recognize that we also have a share of responsibility.
Our task was to ensure the safety of Israeli athletes,” he added.
Herzog lamented that "for years a simple truth seemed to have been forgotten: that this was not just a Jewish and Israeli tragedy, but a global tragedy that must be remembered and commemorated at every Olympic Games and whose lessons must be taught from generation to generation."
“This massacre defiled the cohesive and unifying sanctity of the Olympic Games, the ultimate symbol of sport, and stained its flag with blood.
The Olympic flag, with its five rings, will never be what it was," said Herzog, who this Tuesday will visit the Bergen Belsen concentration camp, liberated by his father Jaim in 1945 with the British army, which then administered Palestine.
The Israeli delegation to the Munich Olympics, upon returning to their country.
Munich 72 was the great opportunity for Germany to present itself to the world as a modern, friendly and cosmopolitan country, and to erase from the collective imagination the memories of the last Olympic Games that Berlin had organized in the middle of the Nazi era.
The atmosphere was jovial and relaxed, so much so that the Bavarian Police were dressed in civilian clothes and were unarmed.
Munich was for 10 days a kind of festival of concord, which also experienced memorable sporting feats, such as the seven gold medals of the American (and Jewish) swimmer Mark Spitz.
A few hours after that feat, tragedy struck.
Now 50 years ago, in the early hours of September 5, 1972, a commando from the Palestinian terrorist group Black September broke into an apartment belonging to the Israeli team in the Olympic village.
It was made up of eight men who jumped over a fence in the compound, dressed in tracksuits and hiding their weapons in sports bags.
There they killed a coach and an athlete and took nine other team members hostage.
They demanded the release of 234 Palestinian prisoners, as well as the leaders of the far-left German terrorist group Red Army Faction (RAF), Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof.
beginner mistakes
The response of the Police of the Federal Republic – until 1990 the reunification of the two Germanys would not take place – consisted of a rescue operation plagued by incompetence and beginner's errors in which the nine Israeli hostages, an agent and five of the eight kidnappers.
Israel offered to send a specialized unit, but the German government rejected it.
The Army, which had trained snipers, did not participate in the operation because the German Constitution prohibited its intervention in peacetime.
The Bavarian Police were not well equipped or trained to deal with a hostage kidnapping.
He made a disastrous attempt to break into the Olympic village apartment that had to be aborted because the kidnappers realized his intentions.
The Munich attack was the first to be covered live by the media and the assailants could see on television the officers, dressed in brightly colored tracksuits, approaching their door.
German policemen, in the Munich building in which the Israeli athletes were held captive. Bettmann (Bettmann Archive)
The calamitous German police operation, which ended with a shooting at the airport, drew criticism around the world and extremely strained diplomatic relations with Israel, where it caused a shock that still lingers half a century later.
The following day, on September 6, a memorial was held for the victims in which the then president of the International Olympic Committee, Avery Brundage, said that the Games must not give in to terror.
And they resumed, already tinged with mourning.
The relatives of the victims have been asking since then for an official apology from Germany, reasonable compensation and the declassification of the documents that are preserved on the tragedy.
They did not achieve their first victory until two decades ago.
As a gesture of goodwill and making it clear that it was not an admission of responsibility, the German authorities agreed to pay six million marks.
The figure did not go unnoticed in Israel, coinciding with the number of Jews murdered by Nazi Germany and its allies during the Holocaust.
The families then asked to collect in dollars and received 90,000 each, while the Israeli and German lawyers pocketed two million, recalls the Israeli daily
Haaretz
.
Commission of historians
The new agreement with the victims includes the publication of the archives and the creation of a commission of German and Israeli historians that will prepare a report on the greatest tragedy of Olympism.
Incredible as it may seem, Germany never issued an official assessment of what happened.
During the negotiations, the German government had offered the victims 10 million euros, less the 4.6 million that it had already paid in 1972 and 2002. Some considered it "an insult" and
a “terrible joke”, like Ankie Spitzer, widow of André Spitzer, fencing coach of the Israeli team, who acts as spokesperson for the families.
The agreement came just five days before the ceremony.
In addition to the symbolic blow, the families' boycott would have generated a chain of cancellations.
The president of the Israeli Olympic Committee, Yael Arad, had already announced that she would not attend either, in solidarity with the families.
The Israeli president was key in the agreement, acting as a hinge between Steinmeier and the families of the victims to bring their positions closer together, according to the Israeli press.
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