(Munich) Meditation, but also repentance: the German head of state Frank-Walter Steinmeier asked “forgiveness” from the relatives of the Israeli victims of the hostage-taking during the Munich Olympics in 1972, taking responsibility “failures” that accompanied this tragedy.
Posted at 10:58 a.m.
The commemorations, Monday, of the fiftieth anniversary of the attack committed by a Palestinian commando and which claimed the lives of 11 athletes, brought together Israelis and Germans to try to heal the wounds, still alive, of the drama.
On behalf of Germany, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier asked “forgiveness” from the relatives of the victims and took responsibility for the mistakes made by the German authorities.
“As the head of state of this country and on behalf of the Federal Republic of Germany, I ask your forgiveness for the lack of protection of Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics and for the lack of explanation afterwards. ; for the fact that what happened could have happened,” declared the Head of State in the presence of his Israeli counterpart Isaac Herzog.
The ceremony took place on the military base of Fürstenfeldbruck, about thirty kilometers west of Munich, where the assault by the police to free the hostages, ill-prepared, had ended in a “bath of blood “, in the words of the president.
“We are talking about a great tragedy and a triple failure. The first failure concerns the preparation of the Games and the concept of security. The second concerns the events of September 5 and 6, 1972. The third failure begins the day after the attack: silence, repression, oblivion! continued Mr. Steinmeier.
Forget the 1936 Olympics
The attack, on the eleventh day of the Munich Games, marked the history of Olympism with an indelible mark.
Eight members of the Palestinian organization Black September had attacked at dawn the Israeli delegation in its accommodation in the Olympic village.
Killing two Israeli athletes, they had taken nine others hostage, hoping to exchange them for more than 200 Palestinian prisoners.
After long hours of negotiations, the intervention of the German security services on the military base failed “catastrophically”, said the president.
All nine hostages were killed during the operation, along with a West German policeman. Five of the eight hostage takers were shot and the other three captured.
The hostage-taking resulted in a total of 18 deaths. Many media, all over the world, immediately speak of the “Munich massacre”.
The “Games of Joy”, supposed to make people forget those organized in Berlin in 1936, under the Nazi regime, turned into a rout.
Last minute agreement
The list of grievances is long.
“We weren’t prepared for such an attack and yet we should have been,” Steinmeier admitted.
The police assault was poorly organized. “They did not make the slightest attempt to save lives,” Zwi Zamir, then head of the foreign intelligence service (Mossad), had carried away in a declassified report in 2012.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) had decided not to interrupt the Olympics.
Bereaved relatives have “hit a wall” every time they have tried to get answers from Germany or the IOC, according to Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
“You don’t know what we’ve been through for the past 50 years,” said Ankie Spitzer, whose husband Andrei was one of the coaches killed in Munich.
The commemorations almost turned into a fiasco with the threat of boycotting families who fought for decades to obtain from Germany an amount of compensation deemed sufficient.
An agreement in extremis was reached last week.
The government of Olaf Scholz has agreed to release an envelope of 28 million euros, partly paid by Bavaria and the city of Munich. Berlin had previously offered 10 million euros, including some 4.5 million already paid in 1972 and 2002.
“The attack was followed by years and decades of silence and repression, years of growing indifference to the plight of the survivors. Years of hard-heartedness,” Mr. Steinmeier said. “That too is a failure.”