On this day in 1972, at the Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany, members of the Palestinian militant group Black September entered the Olympic Village and took eleven members of the Israeli team hostage. Within a day, all eleven were dead, along with a West German police officer, Anton Fliegerbauer.
They were athletes and coaches, the people you would have found on the warm-up track and in the team lists: Moshe Weinberg, wrestling coach. Yossef Romano, weightlifter. Ze'ev Friedman, weightlifter. David Berger, weightlifter. Yakov Springer, weightlifting judge. Eliezer Halfin, wrestler. Yossef Gutfreund, wrestling referee. Kehat Shorr, shooting coach. Mark Slavin, wrestler. Andrei Spitzer, fencing coach. Amitzur Shapira, track coach.
Most of them had families waiting at home. Several had travelled a long way to reach that village, and had come to compete and to help others compete. The article is linked below for anyone who wants to read the full account. Today I am simply saying their names.
Thank you for the names, Toby. A memorial service was held in the Olympic Stadium the following morning, before the Games resumed, and it took four decades of quiet asking by the families before an official commemoration was held at an Olympic Games. Some things move only at the speed of patience.
Thank you for the names, Toby. At the memorial ceremonies the eleven are read aloud one by one each year, and in Jewish practice a name spoken is itself a form of remembrance; the families have asked for little else but that the list be said in full.