One morning on September 5, 1972 something unforgettable happened at one of the Olympic village houses on 31st Connolly street.  Nothing felt, looked, or seemed different, but there were a group of five terrorists dressed in sweats with bags holding weapons.  They jumped the fence.  Nothing unusual because people saw athletes jump the fence all the time going or coming to practice.  It was to be found out that the terrorists were from a group called BLACK  SEPTEMBER.

     At 5:00 a.m. the five terrorists knocked on the door of Israeli wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg.  He cracked the door to looked and knew something was wrong.  He slammed the door shut and yelled to the others "GET OUT OF HERE NOW."  Then Tuvia Sokolsky, an athlete, said he saw his coach hit by a hail of bullets through the door.  Joseph Romano age 32, weightlifter was second to die .  He was shot by automatic rifle fire.
     There had been 11 people in the room and in ten seconds the terrorists killed two and only 9 were left.  They took there hostages out the back door through a tunnel were they ran into Tommy Burleson a seven foot four inch center from N.C. state university.  He had been walking through the tunnel at the same time.  When the police asked him if he had seen anything he said," I was walking to go back to my room when I ran into them, they jammed me into the wall.  The people behind them me were armed with guns and were holding hostages."      

     When they past he followed them around the corner but they were already gone.  At 9:30 they had announced that they were Palestinians.  Their demands were announced at 9:32. They wanted the release 200 Arab guerrillas.  Terrorists said if their demands were not met by noon they would kill two of the hostages.  At the start of the siege three hundred policemen were already there.  The negotiator was police chief Manfred Schreiber.  The terrorists kept no certain deadline they changed it from one p.m.  Nearing 1:00 they changed it to three.  Again nearing three it was changed to five.  Then it would be cancelled.  Negotiations began again.
     There requests were for a helicopter to take them to an air base in Firsten Field Bruck were they would get on an plane to take them and their hostages to Cairo.  When a bus came to take them to the heliport the terrorists ordered a new army bus so that nothing was tampered with. When the new army bus arrived the terrorists came out tied to the hostages making it impossible to sharp shoot them.  Their also now were eight terrorists instead of five.  So there weren't even enough sharp shooters in position to take them all out.  One of the marks men fired and killed one of the terrorists.  Automatically the other terrorists started shooting the hostages killing them all.  One of the terrorists threw a grenade into one of the helicopters killing all inside.  Eleven men were dead. 
     On October 29, a Lufthansa jet hijacked by terrorists demanding that the Munich killers be released.  The terrorists were let go.  Israeli decided to send out there assassination team to find all those who were responsible for the murders.  The assassins targeted  eleven suspects.  Eight of the eleven were assassinated.  The other three of witch were not killed, one would die of natural causes and the other two would later be killed by the assassins.  Through all there looking they would never find the mastermind of it all.  
After the tragedy the security got a lot  tighter.  there were 30,00 security members  positioned there.  Even because of the tragedy the Olympics were not postponed.  It effected all of the athletes. The teammates of the dead wore white uniforms to honor there friends.  Some used it to help them.  Frank Shorter, who won the marathon in the 1972 games said, "defiance through a strong performance is the best way an athlete at these games can respond to terrorism."
Michael Pugh

8th American History

Rossville Jr. High

Munich Massacre 1972

May 2002

 

Bibliography

 those killed in the 1972 Olympics