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Olympic assassination attempt in 1972 – between failure and cover-up
An armed police officer in a tracksuit secures the block in the Olympic Village where terrorists are holding the Israeli hostages
© Horst Ossinger / DPA
At the Summer Olympics in Munich, eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team and a German policeman died in a cruel attack by Palestinian terrorists on September 5th and 6th, 1972. There is still a lot of catching up to do in terms of processing.
The 1972 Munich Olympics should have shown Germany to the world in a new light, emerging from the shadow of its Nazi past. It was supposed to be a summer festival of international understanding, colourful, cheerful and, above all, demilitarized – with as few security precautions as possible. A decision that ended in disaster. “The German organizers fell victim to their best intentions to some extent,” says Roman Deininger, chief reporter for the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, in the 354th episode “important today”.
Fatal mistakes, an amateurish effort: “Whatever can go wrong went wrong.”
Palestinian terrorists broke into the Olympic Village on September 5, 1972, shooting dead two Israelis on the spot and taking nine hostage. Several rescue attempts fail. Finally, the terrorists demand to be flown to Egypt with the hostages. The operation at the Fürstenfeldbruck military airport, in which an attempt was made to eliminate the assassins, fails. In the end, all the hostages die, a policeman and five of the eight assassins.
The operation on the day of the attack was amateurish, says Roman Deininger. “You weren’t prepared, but you should have been.” The police had no operational strategy, no well-trained snipers and precision rifles. “One was really blank when the assassins climbed over the fence of the Olympic village on September 5,” says the “SZ” journalist. “Whatever can go wrong has gone wrong.”
The German failure in dealing with the assassination: 50 years ago and today
After the deaths of the eleven Israelis and the police officer, the failure continued. “The first failure was the amateurish police operation and the ignoring of warnings. The second, however, was the shabby treatment of the bereaved and the refusal to provide information, the cover-up. That’s almost morally worse for me,” says Roman Deininger. After the 1972 Olympics in Germany, there was a strong will simply to put the lid on this terrible event. “You didn’t want to exhibit your own failure.”
The German handling of the assassination still concerns the relatives today. And the dispute over adequate compensation between the victims’ families and the federal government almost turned the commemoration of the 50th anniversary into a farce. The relatives threatened to cancel. An agreement was only reached at the last moment. The surviving dependents and the federal government are said to have agreed to 28 million in compensation – a compromise. “It is incredibly important that there was this agreement,” says Roman Deininger, “because otherwise the effort to commemorate with dignity this year would have ended undignified. You can only commemorate with the relatives of the victims.”
And for a long time the German government denied the relatives everything that would have been decent, says Roman Deininger: “The truth about what happened, access to the files, an apology, but also compensation.” Even today there are historical contradictions and gaps. A German-Israeli historians’ commission is now to investigate the issues that are still open. And “that is urgently needed,” believes Roman Deininger. “The research is never finished. There are always new findings.”
© TVNOW / Andreas Friese
Podcast “important today”
Sure, opinionated, on the 12: “today important” is not just a news podcast. We set topics and initiate debates – with attitude and sometimes uncomfortable. Host Michel Abdollahi and his team speak out for this star– and RTL reporters with the most exciting people from politics, society and entertainment. They let all voices have their say, both the quiet and the loud. Anyone who hears “important today” starts the day well informed and can have a well-founded say.
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