Fallen Israeli athletes will be honored at Munich memorial
Families say they’ve been pushing for years for acknowledgement
For 43 years, the families of the victims of the terrorist attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics have pushed and lobbied the German government and the International Olympic Committee for some kind of official acknowledgment to publicly honor those killed in the massacre.
Now they may be closer than ever.
Construction is set to begin this year on a memorial for the victims, German government officials and one victim’s widow said. The memorial will be within the site of the former athletes’ village in Munich, where 11 Israeli athletes and coaches were taken hostage by members of the Palestinian group Black September.
According to Ankie Spitzer, whose husband, Andre, a fencing coach, was killed in the attack, the IOC also has expressed strong support for creating a memorial for the victims inside the Olympic park at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games, as well as including them in a larger memorial element at Rio’s closing ceremony, the first time the victims would be honored in that way.
Spitzer has pressed the IOC for decades to formally acknowledge the massacre. She said she and relatives of the other victims were overwhelmingly encouraged by the progress in their quest for remembrance.
“I think our fight is very close to being over,” she said.
In an emailed statement, the IOC said it had repeatedly honored the victims over the years, starting with a one-day suspension of competition during the Munich Games for a memorial service, and that Olympic officials had regularly attended events commemorating the attack in the decades since.
“The memory of the victims of the greatest tragedy in Olympic history is not fading away and will not be forgotten by the IOC,” the statement said.
Yet, the IOC long had opposed any official remembrance during the games of the attack or the deaths. Most recently, at the 2012 Games in London, former IOC President Jacques Rogge rejected proposals from the Israeli government and two U.S. representatives for a moment of silence during the opening ceremony.
“This has not been a hobby for me,” Spitzer said. “I have a job and a family, and time goes on. But I owe it to the 11. I owe it to them. I saw the room. I saw what happened there.”
Werner Keng, a senior official in the Education and Arts Ministry in the German state of Bavar-
Pia, said the Munich memorial was expected to be open to the public by September 2016. Keng said creating a monument was long overdue, and he speculated that the hesitation to do so earlier had been related to embarrassment among some in the German government.
The attack, which took place during an Olympics designed by the Germans as a way to showcase the changes in their country in the postwar era, involved a number of acknowledged security lapses and errors.
Keng said the memorial would be near the building in the athletes’ village where the Israelis had been held hostage. It is expected to cost about 1.7 million euros (a little less than $2 million), and the costs are being shared by the Bavarian government; German government; IOC; and Foundation for Global Sports Development, an organization dedicated to promoting fair play and other sports-related initiatives.
David Ulich, president of the foundation, which had been tracking the families’ efforts, said the election of Thomas Bach, a German, to the IOC presidency in 2013 had been a turning point. The Bavarian government had begun discussions about building a memorial in 2012, and once he replaced Rogge, Bach quickly pledged the involvement of the IOC. Bach is a former Olympic fencer who competed at the 1976 Montreal Games, and he had a personal connection to some of the victims.
Under previous presidents, the IOC had frustrated families of the victims in their attempts to have the Munich attack commemorated at the games. While Olympic officials attended memorial events organized around the games — Bach joined Rogge and others at the one in London in 2012 — there was never any movement from the IOC to have an official moment of silence.
Advocates for the families often have questioned how big a role politics has played in the IOC’s declining to memorialize the victims. Spitzer said she understood the awareness of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the IOC’s fears about politicizing the games, and for that reason she often stressed to officials that a tribute did not have to be about “the Israeli team.” Rather, she said, she pushed the IOC simply to have a moment in which current athletes would be made aware that, in the past, “11 members of the Olympic family arrived with a dream and went home in a coffin.”
While plans for an official remembrance at the Rio Games are still being worked out, Bach has made it clear he believes the Olympic movement should give formal, sensitive acknowledgment to the Munich victims and other Olympians who have died, such as Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, who was killed during a practice run at the 2010 Vancouver Games. At the opening of the planned mourning area in the Olympic Village in Brazil, Bach said, there will be an opportunity for the IOC to “remember all those who have lost their lives at the Olympic Games.”