Olympic Opening Ceremonies Remembering the 11 Murdered Israeli Olympians from 1972

Bob Costas

We want to remember the Israeli athletes and coaches who were specifically targeted, taken hostage and murdered by terrorists. This happened before I was born, but if we fail to learn from history we are doomed to repeat it. The Olympic Committee has decided not to honor these athletes with a one minute moment of silence during the opening ceremonies on the 40th anniversary of their death. This decision is being met with resistance. NBC's Bob Costas has raised opposition and said that during his coverage he is going to observe a minute of silence in honor of the eleven Israelis.

Here is the beginning of their tragic account.

During the Munich Games in 1972, security was especially lax around the Olympic Village. Germany wanted to present a different picture of themselves than the militant 1936 Berlin Olympics. While Israeli officials expressed concerns over the security, little was done to shield the athletes.

On the evening of September 4, 1972, while most athletes slept, eight terrorists entered the Olympic Village by climbing the fence with some help from unknowing Canadian athletes. They found the Israeli's apartments and used stolen keys to enter.

"Yossef Gutfreund, a wrestling referee, was awakened by a faint scratching noise at the door of Apartment 1, which housed the Israeli coaches and officials. When he investigated, he saw the door begin to open and masked men with guns on the other side. He shouted a warning to his sleeping roommates and threw his nearly 300 lb. (135 kg) weight against the door in a futile attempt to stop the intruders from forcing their way in. Gutfreund's actions gave his roommate, weightlifting coach Tuvia Sokolovsky, enough time to smash a window and escape. Wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg fought the intruders, who shot him through his cheek and then forced him to help them find more hostages. Leading the kidnappers past Apartment 2, Weinberg lied to the kidnappers by telling them that the residents of the apartment were not Israelis. Instead, Weinberg led them to Apartment 3, where the gunmen corralled six wrestlers and weightlifters as additional hostages. It is possible that Weinberg hoped that the stronger men would have a better chance of fighting off the attackers, but they were all surprised in their sleep.

As the athletes from Apartment 3 were marched back to the coaches' apartment, the wounded Weinberg again attacked the kidnappers, allowing one of his wrestlers, Gad Tsobari, to escape via the underground parking garage.^[24] The burly Weinberg knocked one of the intruders unconscious and slashed another with a fruit knife before being shot to death. Weightlifter Yossef Romano, a veteran of the Six-Day War, also attacked and wounded one of the intruders before being shot and killed.

An Actual Terrorist from the 1972 Olympic Attack

The gunmen were left with nine hostages. They were, in addition to 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. Gutfreund, physically the largest of the hostages, was bound to a chair (Groussard describes him as being tied up like a mummy); the rest were lined up four apiece on the two beds in Springer and Shapira's room, and bound at the wrists and ankles and then to each other. Romano's bullet-riddled corpse was left at his bound comrades' feet as a warning.

Of the other members of Israel's team, racewalker Prof. Shaul Ladany had been jolted awake in Apartment 2 by Gutfreund's screams and escaped by jumping off a balcony and running through the rear yard of the building. The other four residents of Apartment 2 (sharpshooters Henry Hershkowitz and Zelig Stroch, and fencersDan Alon and Yehuda Weisenstein), plus Chef De Mission Shmuel Lalkin and the two team doctors, managed to hide and later fled the besieged building. The two female members of Israel's Olympic team, sprinter and hurdler Esther Roth-Shahamorov and swimmer Shlomit Nir, were housed in a separate part of the Olympic Village and were not taken hostages. Three more members of Israel's Olympic team, two sailors and their manager, were housed in Kiel, 550 miles (900 km) from Munich.

The assassins were subsequently reported to be part of the Palestinian fedayeen from refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. They were identified as Luttif Afif (Issa), the leader (three of Issa's brothers were also reportedly members of Black September, two of them in Israeli jails), his deputy Yusuf Nazzal (Tony), and junior members Afif Ahmed Hamid (Paolo), Khalid Jawad (Salah), Ahmed Chic Thaa (Abu Halla), Mohammed Safady (Badran), Adnan Al-Gashey (Denawi), and his cousin Jamal Al-Gashey (Samir). According to author Simon Reeve, Afif, Nazzal and one of their confederates had all worked in various capacities in the Olympic Village, and had spent a couple of weeks scouting out their potential target. A member of the Uruguayan Olympic delegation, which shared housing with the Israelis, claims that he found Nazzal actually inside 31 Connollystraße less than 24 hours before the attack, but since he was recognized as a worker in the Village, nothing was thought of it at the time. The other members of the hostage-taking group entered Munich via train and plane in the days before the attack. All of the members of the Uruguay and Hong Kong Olympic teams, which also shared the building with the Israelis, were released unharmed during the crisis." 

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Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to His purpose."

We can have confidence and trust in our Heavenly Father despite the circumstances.

~Julia