Munich Olympics

Nearly twenty-five years after the massacre of Israeli athletes and officials at the 1972 Munich Olympics, the event remains the most poignant episode in the history of sports—a tragedy that totally changed not only the Olympic movement but also sports as a way of life on the international scene. Anyone who witnessed those Games—athletes, officials, spectators, even members of the news media—remain frozen and frustrated by the experience, touched even today by circumstances they could not control or comprehend at the time.

Bud Greenspan, the film maker, who attended his first Olympic Games in 1948 and produced the official film of the 1972 Olympics, Triumph and Tragedy, says, "The mysticism and magic of the Olympic movement were lost in the aftermath of Munich. You went from idealism and romanticism," Greenspan said, "to the games of big business."

Munich altered the Olympic state of mind. Certainly, political differences had intruded on the field of play during previous Games. The notion that the "Games must go on" disturbed many, as some wondered whether the Germans were really prepared for such circumstances. The remains of Dachau were just down the road from the Olympic Village, and nearby was an apartment house once linked to Hitler and Eva Braun: haunting images of past horrors.

Of all those affected by Munich, it is the athletes who have felt the most enduring pain. "Munich stayed with me the way the Holocaust stayed with me," said Olga Connolly, a 1956 gold medalist in the discus throw from Czechoslovakia, who carried the flag for the United States team during the opening ceremonies in Munich. "It's a reminder, a warning. Beyond the obvious are underlying problems of all mankind, and it's reflected in the Olympics."xiii

No athlete created more waves in Munich than Mark Spitz, with his seven gold medals and seven world records in swimming. Spitz, who is Jewish, had finished competing when the terrorists struck on the rest day between swimming and the start of track and field. The memories were heightened 13 years later when Spitz was asked to carry the torch and light the flame for the Maccabiah Games in Israel. Spitz had competed in the games in 1965 and 1969. Now, he was running into a darkened stadium escorted by three little girls, all of whose fathers had died in the Munich massacre.

Munich had promised so much, a nationalistic cleansing for West Germany from the 1936 Berlin Olympics and a world war. German officials went to unusual lengths to play down stereotypical links to the country's militaristic past—from the selection of bright, pastel colors and fanciful music, to the relaxed security that unwittingly allowed the Palestinian terrorists posing as athletes to infiltrate the village in the early morning hours.

There were no Israelis guarding the rooms of the athletes and officials attacked by gunmen of the Black September organization in the early morning of September 5, 1972, at the Munich Olympic Village. Two athletes were slain immediately and the rest were taken hostage as part of a demand for the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. After day-long negotiations, the hostages and their captors were moved to a military airfield, where they were killed aboard two helicopters in a hail of gunfire in the early morning hours of September 6 after German sharpshooters opened up on the kidnappers. At least one helicopter was engulfed by flames.

But the hostage-taking, the long hours of negotiations even as competition continued, an attempted settlement to the crisis, the airport fiasco and a memorial service became an emotional overload. Before and after Munich, athletes had died during competitions, in plane crashes and through freakish out-of-season accidents. But the sight of the hooded terrorist on the balcony outside the Israeli dorm is framed in Olympic memory. Munich also spawned a different attitude within the Olympic family, an almost anything-is-now-fair game syndrome. Black African nations boycotted Montreal, the United States, West Germany, Japan and others stayed home from Moscow to protest the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, and the Soviet bloc reciprocated by skipping Los Angeles in 1984.

Relatives and the former athletes are troubled by nagging questions about how the Israeli sportsmen died during a failed German rescue attempt, and they resent the absence of official commemorations at the five Summer Games that have followed. For some, Munich was a lesson in international indifference that has left them more cynical and convinced that Israelis can rely only on themselves.xiv

While competition in Munich was suspended for two days and a memorial ceremony held, Olympics officials have turned down relatives' requests for commemorations at subsequent Games with the argument that it would inject politics into the events. For Israelis, the 20th anniversary was brought home at Barcelona when a judo competitor, Yael Arad, finished second in her division to win Israel's first Olympic medal. She dedicated the medal to the families of the Munich victims.xv