“The Games must go on”: That’s what the then IOC President Avery Brundage said at the funeral service in the Olympic Stadium. When it comes to ignoring crises, world sport still refers to these words today.
Of
Ralph Wiegand
25 years later, Joachim “Blacky” Fuchsberger and Eberhard Stanjek sat again in the stands of the Munich Olympic Stadium and remembered that day, September 6, 1972, the day after the assassination. At 4:20 a.m. on September 5, eight members of the Palestinian terrorist organization Black September climbed over the fence of the Olympic Village and took eleven Israeli athletes hostage. Around 16 hours later, all eleven hostages were dead, as were five of the assassins and a police officer. It was the eleventh day of the games, with six more to come. Or not?