Munich Massacre Memorial

From Reuters:

"Munich memorial marks 1972 Olympic Games attack on Israeli team"

Victims of the attack on the Israeli team at the 1972 Olympic Games were remembered by Germany and Israel on Wednesday with a memorial, following a long campaign by their relatives.  German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his Israeli counterpart Reuven Rivlin attended the inauguration of the “Munich 1972 massacre memorial” at Munich’s Olympic Park, 45 years after the attack by Palestinian gunmen.  “Relatives of the victims and the state of Israel waited almost half a century for this moment,” Rivlin said. “45 years have passed for an official Israeli delegation to return to this place. The Munich Olympics became the blood Olympics.”  Members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage on Sept. 5, 1972, at the poorly secured athletes village by Palestinians from the Black September group.   Eleven Israelis, a German policeman as well as five of the Palestinian gunmen died after a stand-off at the village and then a nearby airfield, as police rescue efforts failed.  The memorial offers some comfort for relatives who have also long demanded a minute’s silence at the Opening Ceremonies of Olympics Games, only to be consistently turned down by the IOC.   Steinmeier said it had taken too long for the memorial to be built.  “It is high time and we owe it firstly to you, the relatives,” Steinmeier said. “The Olympic village became a place of Palestinian terrorists, a stage for their boundless hatred for Israel. It should never have happened.”   Ankie Spitzer, whose fencing coach husband, Andre, was one of the victims, and Ilana Romano, wife of weightlifter Joseph Romano, have waged a decades-long campaign to get a commemoration at the Games’ opening ceremony.  “We wanted this memorial. In the years after we heard voices that us Israelis brought war to Germany and the terrorists were hailed as freedom fighters,” Romano said.  “That hurt so much but we did not give up. We knew our way was the right one ... for the future of our children and the next generations,” she added.  The IOC, whose president Thomas Bach was also present, has said opening ceremonies are not the appropriate platform and has instead made other gestures to remember the victims.  At last year’s Rio de Janeiro Games the IOC inaugurated “the Place of Mourning”, a small park which will be a feature at every Olympics.

^ The IOC and West Germany did little to nothing in 1972 to either protect or save the Israeli athletes before and during the terrorist attack. It has taken 45 years for Germany to build the memorial because they tend to think that the terrorist attack was the fault of the Israelis rather than the Palestinian terrorists. Both the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany and the 1972 Olympics in West Germany were mired by what happened to Jews and that doesn't make the Germans look good. In 1936 it was what Nazi Germany was doing to German Jews (ie. not allowing them to participate, etc.) and in 1972 it was the poor West German security that helped the terrorists murdered the Israeli Jews. Germany's track record in hosting peaceful and non-political Olympics is bad. The IOC is also at fault for not making sure security was tight in 1972 and also for trying to "push" the murders of the Israeli athletes "under the rug" both in 1972 and throughout the 4 decades since. The IOC tries to claim it is because they don't want tp be political and the Olympics are all about the Sports, but it was Israeli athletes participating in the Games that were targeted and murdered and those deaths should have been recognized by the IOC immediately in 1972 and again throughout the years on different anniversaries. I don't usually think Germany creates very good memorials (they usually tend to be abstract or ultra-modern  - especially when the subject is something so solemn as the Holocaust, World War 2 or Communist crimes in East Germany - but I do think the Munich Massacre Memorial is both solemn and modern. ^

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-israel/munich-memorial-marks-1972-olympic-games-attack-on-israeli-team-idUSKCN1BH1EV