A service at the Dachau concentration camp memorial site is intended to commemorate the eleven Israeli victims of the 1972 Olympic attack. The service to mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination will take place next Sunday, September 4, at 11 a.m. in the Evangelical Church of Reconciliation, as Pastor Björn Mensing announced on Thursday. Short biographies of the victims should also be presented. Some of the victims had survived the Holocaust or came from families of victims of Nazi persecution, it is said. A candle is to be lit for each sacrifice. With the approval of Josef Schuster, President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and the State Association of Israelite Religious Communities in Bavaria, the burning candles are to be carried from the Church of Reconciliation to the neighboring Jewish Memorial.
On September 5, 1972, Palestinian terrorists attacked the Israeli Olympic team in the Olympic Village in Munich and took several hostages. The liberation action at the Fürstenfeldbruck air base failed. In the end, eleven Israelis, a Bavarian policeman and five hostage-takers lost their lives. A memorial event with high-ranking guests is to take place at the air base next Monday. According to Mensing’s research, the Israeli Olympic team had visited the Dachau concentration camp memorial a few days before the assassination. On September 1, 1972, all the athletes, coaches and support staff went to Dachau to commemorate the victims of the concentration camp on the anniversary of the German invasion of Poland and to lay a wreath at the International Memorial.