A Moment of Silence for 1972 Olympic Game Victims

I have been very fortunate in my life to have attended several of the Olympic Games.  May 1972 my husband was transferred from Frankfurt to Augsburg, Germany.  Augsburg is approximately 57 kilometers (35.5 miles) from Munich and was the venue for the whitewater events.  As I looked at the pictures I had taken, one glaring fact is visible.  People didn't worry about security.  You could walk where you wanted.  You can see how close the crowds were to the event.  “Security” was the police making sure people did not hang over the bridge too far or didn’t fall into the water as people sat on the side of the embankment. That was August 28th, the first week of the Olympics.

Eiskcancal,

 the world's first artificial whitewater course

     

   

One week later, in Munich, the Olympics changed forever.  On September 5th, eight members of the Black September Organization (BSO), a Palestinian terrorist group, disguised as athletes, walked into the Olympic village.  They killed two members of the Israeli team and took nine others as hostages. 

My husband was an MP in the U.S. ASA, a top-security clearance agency. Their motto:  Vigilant Always.  The ASA units operated 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in shifts.  Their operations were top secret and they could not talk about their specific duties, even to their spouses (this was back in the day when the old Armed Forces mantra was, “If we wanted you to have a family, we would have issued you one.”).  My husband was called in as the base went on high alert and on lock down (no one goes in or out).  He could only tell me turn on the radio. Television went off the air at midnight.


The terror at the Village started at 4 am.  The standoff lasted 18 hours.  Two helicopters transported the terrorists and the 9 hostages to Munich’s Furstenfeldbruck Airport.  This action had been precipitated by a request from the BSO group for a jet to transport them to Egypt.  Following an attempt by the German police to rescue them, all of the hostages and most of the terrorists were killed.  The local papers, Munich’s Abendzeitung and Augsburg’s Augsburger Allgemeine, plus our own Armed Forces Stars and Stripes, filled in the blanks for those of us without security clearances.


Eight German police officers dressed as flight attendants and crew members.  At some point, they were ordered to open fire.  The Israeli athletes were still sitting in the helicopters, 5 in one, and 4 in the other.  The gun battle bewteen the police snipers and the terrorists went on for an hour and fifteen minutes.  During that time, one of the BSO members tossed a grenade into the helicopter of 5.  It exploded killing all five athletes.  Another BSO member entered the second helicopter and shot and killed the last four.  Three of the surviving terrorists were captured by the police. 


Since that day, "security" at the Olympics changed.  The modern age of terror was ushered in by the massacre of the 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany.  On this 40th anniversary, a moment of silence to remember them is not too much to ask.  Just my opinion.

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