Written by The 1972 Munich Olympic Games are the first Olympic Games I can remember. I was 8 years old on that late August Saturday when they began. Old enough to know that I loved sports and for those Games to be a spark in my lifelong love affair with sports. I was also young enough to be innocent of the pain that can go with that love.
Those Munich Games got off to a brilliant start. Beautiful opening ceremonies, swimmer Mark Spitz, redeeming his flop in Mexico City winning seven gold medals, Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut charming the world, and imposing Cuban boxer Teofilo Stevenson showing he was all but unbeatable, in the first week of competition.
Then on September 5th everything changed. Armed Palestinian terrorists broke into one of the Israeli delegation’s dormitory units in a white-gray, modernist concrete apartment building in the Olympic Village, at 31 Connollystrasse, setting in motion a chain of events that would leave 11 Israeli Olympians dead. The fabric of sports was torn over the next 24 hours by the unfolding hostage crisis, before ABC’s Jim McKay came on air to tell us in America that “our worst fears have been realized, tonight” and that “they are all gone.”
There was debate as to whether the Munich Games would continue, and after a day of mourning, they did go on. But that tear was never addressed again until these Tokyo Olympics in 2021. Israeli and Brazilian officials held a remembrance two days before the 2016 Rio Games began, but nothing during the official span of any Games, until this one, when at the opening ceremonies a moment of silence was announced for all those lost during the Covid crisis and from the Olympics.
“In particular we remember those who lost their lives during the Olympic Games,” the announcer said. “One group still holds a strong place in all our memories and stands for all of those we have lost at the games: the members of the Israel delegation at the Olympic Games Munich 1972.”
For the widows, brothers and sisters, even still some parents, of those murdered and for all who care about sports that tear in the fabric of sport was finally being addressed, mended by the remembering. So much of my own understanding of sport has been shaped by my love of the Olympics, that began with watching the competition from Munich, on television from half a world away, nearly 50 years ago. In turn, my love of sport has informed my worldview, helped hone my humanity and helped develop my values. Sports force us to confront our own shortcomings and weakness and acknowledge the exceptional qualities and strength of our fellow competitors. All putting into perspective that winning and losing are just temporary stops in a larger, longer race, the human race.
The Munich Games were meant to be a mending of a great tear of their own. Starting just 27 years after the end of World War II, the Games were intent on burying the horrors of Nazism and the Holocaust. If you been to Munich, you’ll recall it is a flat city but next to the Olympic Stadium there is a hill, built from rubble and debris collected from the city, the ruins of a dark past, now literally buried near a beautiful park and stadium. In a world divided between the US and Soviet spheres the strategic importance of West Germany was clear. Its economy boomed through the 1950s and 1960s and that economic plenty enabled the Munich organizers to build an Olympic complex and village that looks like it still could be built to open tomorrow.
The Munich Games were also to be the “green” Olympics. Green in the sense that the design ethic of the Games focused on natural elements and the harmony and equality of all of us within nature. Hitler’s 1936 Berlin Olympics had pioneered the torch relay. So, the Munich flame was not housed in an imposing cauldron. Rather, it was a modestly erected-torch and bowl, resembling a taller, more stylized patio heater, set on a single pole amidst a bank of young trees on one side of the stadium. If you go to Munich, now, you’ll see the trees have grown and now almost eclipse the torch in height. Years pass and trees grow but the pain of those who love sports endured, as the deaths of those Israeli Olympians- athletes, officials, and coaches remained unacknowledged.
I’ve been to Munich twice. I’ve toured the stadium and walked the grounds, still brilliantly designed and preserved. I’ve walked in the footsteps that mark my earliest memories of what the Olympics are, can be, and tragically failed to be in 1972- a celebration of sport, peace, and global understanding. I’ve stopped at 31 Connollystrasse and each time left a stone to remember those 11 who died, simply because they loved sports.
However we remember these current Games of Tokyo, whatever legacy they leave, they will forever be the Olympics that finally began repairing the tear in the fabric of sport left by the tragedy of Munich. We restitch that tear, if only slightly, in remembering Andrei Spitzer, David Berger, Ze’ev Friedman, Yossef Gutfreund, Eliezer Halfin, Yossef Romano, Amitzur Shapira, Kehat Shorr, Yakov Springer, Mark Slavin and Moshe Weinberg. Each year the trees of Munich grow and memories fade. They surely must. But the lives and deaths of these 11 athletes now acknowledged, still touch and serve as a reminder to all of us who love sport as they did.