In the anniversary year, a lot is being reminded of the happy games of 1972 – but the summer games in Munich half a century ago also had a ghastly side. At that time, Palestinian terrorists carried out an attack on the Israeli team; eleven members of the team and one policeman died. On September 5th, the victims will be remembered at a central commemoration ceremony in Fürstenfeldbruck. However, the bereaved have canceled their participation because the promised formal compensation payment from the federal government of 5.4 million euros is too low. The spokesman for the victims’ families described the offer as an “insult” and a “tip”. Now a discussion has broken out as to whether and if so, how the commemoration ceremony can still take place in a dignified manner.
The anti-Semitism commissioner of the Bavarian state government, Ludwig Spaenle (CSU), had questioned the event entirely. “You have to seriously check whether the commemoration can still take place after the cancellation of the bereaved,” he said Editorial Network Germany said. “It must not degenerate into the grotesque.” The development did not surprise him, he had been warning for weeks that the complaints of the bereaved should be taken seriously and discussed at eye level.
He wrote to Chancellor Scholz (SPD) three months ago, explains Spaenle SZ-Request, noting that the situation was “sensitive and serious”. To date, he has not even received an acknowledgment of receipt of his letter. In Munich, the memory of the act was completely suppressed until a few years ago, the victims’ families were “unwanted petitioners on the back stairs”. Now the climate after the scandal surrounding Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Scholz’ later reaction to his relativization of the Holocaust at a joint press conference has become even rougher. He therefore sticks to the fact that a cancellation must be checked “in the light of the events”.
Charlotte Knobloch, President of the Jewish Community in Munich and Upper Bavaria, lets it be known that she doesn’t think much of it. Her great wish is “that the event can take place in a dignified and meaningful form at the end,” she said on request. She very much hopes that the federal government and the families of the victims will find a good solution together in good time – “in the interest of remembrance and of our two countries”.
Mayor Verena Dietl (SPD) thinks it shouldn’t fail because of the money
After many years in which the commemoration of the Olympic assassination did not play a major role in Germany, September 5, 1972 is finally more in the public eye. “The task of keeping the memory of this day alive affects us all.” Publicly visible commemoration remains “extremely important”, especially for the younger generations, who have no personal memories of Munich in 1972.
Munich’s top city is positioned in a similar way. Mayor Verena Dietl (SPD) finds the developments “very regrettable”. She hopes that the ongoing negotiations will end well, that a consensus will be reached with the bereaved and that the upheavals will end. “It shouldn’t fail because of the payments.” The commemoration event is an “important sign”. Remembering the victims of the terrorist attack is part of it, “you can’t pretend it didn’t happen.”
Canceling the commemoration would not help anyone, says the parliamentary group leader of the Greens, Dominik Krause. In his view, it should only be canceled if the victims’ relatives demanded it – otherwise it was important that the city remembered the event. According to Krause, he can understand the ongoing displeasure of the bereaved, after all, the way they were treated for decades was “completely unworthy and inappropriate”. But he also believes that the federal government is trying to make amends – and hopes that there is still a good solution. In principle, the federal government must find a new way of dealing with victims of right-wing extremist and anti-Semitic violence, including compensation payments.
The CSU faction leader in the city council, Manuel Pretzl, sees things differently. In this “bad mood” one cannot be responsible for going through with the commemoration event. “I would cancel them.”