A black September for the Olympics

September 6 1972 — The Munich massacre ends at about 1.30am with 11 Israeli Olympic athletes, pictured, (and a West German police officer) dead at the hands of the Palestinian Black September terrorist group. At 4.30am on September 5, eight terrorists scaled a 2m chain-link fence of the Olympic Village, assisted by unsuspecting athletes who were also sneaking in. The group used stolen keys to enter two of the Israeli team’s apartments. Wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg, 33, and weightlifter Yossef Romano, 31, were shot dead while fighting the intruders. The attackers took nine Israelis hostage; demanded the release of 234 Palestinians jailed in Israel, and Red Army Faction’s Germany-held Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof; and, after lengthy negotiation, a plane to Cairo. Just after 10.30pm, the hostages and terrorists arrived at Fürstenfeldbruck (a Nato air base where a Boeing 727 was positioned on the tarmac) in military helicopters. In a botched rescue attempt, the terrorists attack the helicopters and kill weightlifters Ze’ev Friedman, 28, and David Berger, 28, wrestler Eliezer Halfin, 24, weightlifting judge Yakov Springer, 51, shooting coach Kehat Shorr, 53, wrestling referee Yossef Gutfreund, 40, wrestler Mark Slavin, 18, fencing coach Andre Spitzer, 27, and track coach Amitzur Shapira, 40. Police officer Anton Fliegerbauer, 32, is shot in the control tower. Five terrorists are killed and three arrested (released in October in a hostage exchange after a Lufthansa hijacking).