51 years have passed since the 'Munich massacre,' Those were 20 hours that shocked the Israeli nation, sports and its defense doctrine. On September 5 at four-thirty in the morning in Germany, eight Palestinian Black September Organization terrorists infiltrated the Israeli delegation's quarters in the Munich Olympic Village. They immediately killed wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg who tried to stop them as well as Israeli weightlifter Yossef Romano, who tried to attack the terrorists with a fruit knife.
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Nine of the remaining Israeli delegation members were taken hostage until nightfall and they were flown by helicopter to the airport. There they were supposed to be taken out of the country with their abductors. The German authorities planned a rescue mission which failed, resulting in the terrorists killing their hostages with grenades in the helicopter. The firefight ended after midnight on September 6.
Israel demanded that Germany cancel the Olympics, which it did not. The Israeli public avidly followed updates throughout the Munich attack. Hours after the attack started, local media kept the country updated until its tragic end.
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The victims of the 1972 Munich massacre
(Photo: Photo: Courtesy of the Olympic Committee of Israel)
The names of the 11 terror victims of the Munich massacre are Moshe Weinberg, Yossef Romano, Zeev Freidman, Yossef Gotfreund, Yaakov Shpringer, Mark Slavin, Kehat Shor, Eliezer Halfin, David Berger, Andrei Shpitzer, Amitzur Shapira. May they rest in peace.