The events that occurred in Munich changed the complexion of worldwide sports security.

By: Geoff Latayan

Last August 23, 2010, when I, along with millions (maybe billions because of its worldwide notoriety) of people, were glued on the television screens watching the hostage crisis perpetrated by an ex-policeman which caused the lives of eight people (including the hostage taker), I suddenly remembered a gruesome event in sports history that had the world watching and feeling every beat of it.

A hostage drama happened almost 38 years ago (oh God, I was not born yet), September 5-6, 1972 to be exact, when a terrorist group named Black September stormed Munich’s Olympic Village, held Israeli athletes and coaches hostage and killed 11 of them along the way, before getting shot dead.

The event was huge as it happened in another big event, the Olympics in Munich. It was during the second week of the Olympics when the Israeli athletes had a night out to watch a performance of Fiddler on the Roof..

Prior to the hostage taking, there have been concerns. The Olympic Games organizing team, the West German Olympic Organizing Committee had pushed for an open and friendly atmosphere among every nation competing in the 20th Munich Olympics.

It was claimed to supposedly banish the image of wartime Germany and of specifically the 1936 Berlin Olympics that was exploited by then Nazi strongman Adolf Hitler for propaganda.

In a documentary, Olympic Massacre, The True Story, the Munich Games was supposed to be “Happy Games” as security protocols were suspended. As much as possible, the police were kept away from the venues and in the Games. Though there were police officers on sight, 2000 of them, but unarmed.

Supposedly, a post-war, low-key Germany was about to be seen that time.

Despite the fact that there were some security concerns, particularly from threats from insurgents like PLO, brought out, it was not within the concept of the Happy Games, so, those security concerns were shelved.

Olympic Village security was reportedly lax as athletes came and went without proper identification. They bypassed security checkpoints and climbed over the chain-link fence surrounding the village.

Back to the Israelis, they were reportedly located in a relatively isolated part of the Village, in a small building close to a gate that could be vulnerable to outside attacks. There were some concerned parties that asked the organizers to relocate the Israelis to a building where the Americans stay or nearby the Americans are located. Sadly, it was not granted for the IOC and the organizing committee refused to do anything about these concerns.

Then came September 5, 4:30 am. As the athletes were sleeping, eight tracksuit-clad Black September members stormed the building. They were carrying duffel bags armed with loaded AKM assault rifles, Tokarev pistols, and grenades. They sneaked on the Village scaling a two-meter chain-link fence. Once inside, they barged in to two apartments being used by the Israeli team at 31 Connollystraße using stolen keys.

As the Black September men were scratching their way to the apartment, Yossef Gutfreund, a wrestling coach, heard the noise. He investigated this and found the masked men on the other side of the door. He shouted a warning to his sleeping roommates and threw his nearly 300 lb. body against the door.

Moshe Weinberg fought the intruders but was shot in the cheek. Seriously wounded, the armed assailants forced Weinberg to locate the rooms of his fellow Israelis. Weinberg pointed the assailants at Apartment 3 where wrestlers and weightlifters were billeted. As wrestler Gad Tsobari escaped, Weinberg, who knocked out an assailant and slashed another with a fruit knife, was killed. Yossef Romano, a weightlifter and a veteran of the Six Day War, also knocked out an assailant before being killed.

Left were nine hostages. Aside from Gutfreund, sharpshooting coach Kehat Shorr, track and field coach Amitzur Shapira, fencing master Andre Spitzer, weightlifting judge Yakov Springer, wrestlers Eliezer Halfin and Mark Slavin, and weightlifters David Berger and Ze’ev Friedman were held hostage by the Black September.

The terrorist, who were led by Luttif Afif (Issa), demanded that the release and safe passage to Egypt of 234 Palestinians and non-Arabs jailed in Israel, including Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, German founders of the Red Army faction. However, the Israeli government was immediate and absolute in saying that there will be no negotiations.

The Germans, who had no experience at all in handling these situations, offered the Palestinians an unlimited amount of money and the substitution of high-ranking Germans for the release of the Israelis but to no avail. Negotiations went as long as Issa granted five sets of deadlines.

The hostage situation had a huge blunder. The world media was covering this crisis. There was footage of a German sniper found setting himself up at the top of one apartment. World was watching so were the terrorists. Then there was another demand from the terrorists. They wanted to be flown to a chopper along with the hostages.

At 6:00 pm, Munich time, the Black Septemberists demanded a flight to Cairo. Issa demanded a test run but there were subsequent plans of gunning him down using snipers. In worries of a wrong move, Manfred Schreiber, Munich police chief told his men that this was a trial run. The voice echoed to the walls, which Issa figured out.

So Issa demanded a bus to carry them to the chopper. And by 10:10 p.m. a bus carried the terrorists and their hostages from 31 Connollystraße to two military helicopters, which were to transport them to nearby Fürstenfeldbruck, a NATO airbase. There was another chopper for the officials who planned to attack the terrorists at the airport.

There was a Boeing 727 jet on standby. At that time, it would be inspected by Issa and Yusuf Nazzal (Tony) and the authorities planned to attack them but they realized that it was not just two terrorists but eight. As the chopper landed, the officers in charge aborted the mission, leaving five untrained ordinary policemen as snipers.

At 10:35 pm, six kidnappers and four pilots emerged. The Black September men broke a promise of not taking any German hostage. While the four kidnappers held the pilots at gunpoint, Tony and Issa, reached the jet to inspect it, they figured it out that it was an ambush because the plane was empty. As they ran to the helicopters, snipers attempted to gun down Issa and Tony but failed but it hit Tony’s thigh. German authorities gave orders to open fire and they killed two kidnappers holding the helicopter pilots. As the remaining kidnappers ran to the scene, a German policeman was killed by gunfire.

Then, there were gunfires that killed two Israelis. This was a reply for the negotiators who is trying to convince the kidnappers of surrendering. At September 6, 12:04 am, one of the terrorists killed three more hostages (Springer, Halfin and Friedman) by firing his Kalashnikov rifle on them from point-blank range. The terrorist pulled the pin and threw the hand grenade into the cockpit. And then, an explosion transpired. As the battle raged on, five Israelis (Gutfreund, Shorr, Slavin, Spitzer and Shapira) were shot dead at the western helicopter by the terrorists. Berger was believed to be the last one killed by suffocation.

Initial reports said that all the hostages were alive and the terrorists were all killed but the story was said to be too optimistic. But it was finally revealed to the world, hours later and the world was shocked. The true story was the carnage left five of the eight terrorists killed, 11 hostages gunned down and one German policeman dead. Three of the terrorists were captured.

A memorial service was made in September 6 and after that the Israel Olympic team withdrew immediately. Other countries joined the diaspora, including the Philippines; right after their last athlete had finished his match.

The incident woke up the German authorities and two months after, they formed the GSG-9, a counter-terrorist force created by General Ulrich Wegener, Hans-Dietrich Genscher’s senior aide, to counter such attacks if just in case it happened again. The attack instilled a lesson that there should be officers trained for these situations and not just officers who were picked just because they shot good that day in the firing range.

Furthermore, it changed the complexion of security in the Olympics. It provided stricter guidelines. Proper identification and inspection was done from then on and a lot of security modifications were implemented thereafter in every Olympic Games.

The Israeli athletes were never forgotten years after. In 1976 Montreal Olympics, the Israelis entered the stadium with their national flag adorned with a black ribbon in commemoration to their dead athletes. Moreover, Munich installed a tablet in memorial to the athletes at the outside door of their lodging place at 31 Connollystraße. Also, there was a tablet placed at the bridge linking the stadium to the former Olympic Village. A memorial plaque was placed in one of the large light towers outside Sydney Olympic Stadium.

What happened in 31 Connollystraße changed everything for the better. There were deaths but it opened the eyes of every people to keep their guard up and to prepare for the worst at every situation.