Munich Massacre: one of sport’s darkest days remembered at 50
On the morning of Sept. 5, 1972, I was 15-years-old and days away from the start of school. When coming downstairs to breakfast, my mother informed me that Israeli athletes and coaches had been taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists at the Munich Summer Olympics. For the rest of the morning, until I left to go to JV soccer practice, I periodically checked the television news, which in 1972 meant ABC and Maryland’s Jim McKay anchoring the coverage.
At practice, over at the new Loch Raven High School, where I was to start 10th Grade, the Olympic hostage crisis was the main topic of conversation, with everyone wondering what would happen. Having some knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, combined with my usual pessimism, my prediction was that the terrorists would probably kill them all.
When Mother picked me up from practice, I asked for an update: nothing, except demand deadlines being set and extended. After supper, my parents and I went to the orientation assembly at school. Returning home, we held out hope, watching TV until nearly midnight here — early morning in Munich — when Jim McKay announced that my expectation had come to pass. “They’re all gone,” he said. I got up, announced that “I hope they go to hell” and stormed out of the room; my parents said nothing, either too stunned by the news or my reaction to it.
The event left an indelible and unforgettable effect on me — no great athlete (I was cut from the JV soccer team), but an ardent sports fan. Now in 2022, on the 50th anniversary of the horrific events in Munich, the commemorations for the Israelis are, not surprisingly, as varied and controversial as in 1972.
At that time, “the aging playground directors,” as legendary sportswriter
Red Smith described them,” held a brief memorial service, which International Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage — a racist, anti-semitic and sexist American — upstaged by declaring “the Games must go on.”
In recent years, efforts at commemoration have smacked of tokenism and insensitivity, as well. In 2012, the former IOC president, Belgium’s Jacques Rogge, said that the opening ceremony was not a “fit” time to remember the slain athletes and coaches, but rather a “reception” was a better way. These efforts seemed not to include athletes or coaches, and some were held after the Games concluded. The Israelis were not killed before or afterward, but during the actual competitions — events for a time were taking place during the hostage standoff. There was a moment of silence at the most recent Olympics, which many people (including me) did not realize even occurred.
This year, Germany and the city of Munich plan to have a commemoration, in conjunction with athletic and cultural events to mark a half-century since the fateful Games. The families of the slain Israelis have decided to boycott the events in Germany, whose government was wholly incompetent in handling the tragedy 50 years ago. Good. My guess is they do not want to be pawns to governments or international organizations. If the IOC had its way, they would open the back door at midnight and loudly whisper “sorry” every four years — at most.
There is no question that the murder of the Israelis at the 1972 Summer Olympic Games was a seminal event, both for the history of the Middle East,the Games and, moreover, the history of organized terrorism.
For me, it remains a searing memory a half-century later; seeing the television clip of Jim McKay telling the nation and much of the world, “they’re all gone,” still brings tears to my eyes. Let all who stand for sports as a means of bringing about international understanding show solidarity toward the memory of a nation’s Olympic representatives slain 50 years ago.