68
The Olympics celebrate the best of humanity, and in
1972 Germany welcomed the Games to exalt its athletes,
tout its democracy and purge the stench of Adolf Hitler’s
1936 Games. The Germans called it “the Games of peace
and joy,” and as Israeli fencer Dan Alon recalled, “Taking
part in the opening ceremony, only 36 years after Berlin,
was one of the most beautiful moments in my life.” Security
was lax so as to project the feeling of harmony. Unfortu-
nately, this made it easy on September 5 for eight mem-
bers of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September to
raid the Munich Olympic Village building housing Israeli
Olympians. Armed with grenades and assault rifles, the ter-
rorists killed two team members, took nine hostage and de-
manded the release of 234 of their jailed compatriots. The
21-hour hostage standoff presented the world with its first
live window on terrorism, and 900 million people tuned in.
During the siege, one of the Black Septemberists made his
way out onto the apartment’s balcony. As he did, Associ-
ated Press photographer Kurt Strumpf froze this haunt-
ing image, the faceless look of terror. As the Palestinians
attempted to flee, German snipers tried to take them out,
and the Palestinians killed the hostages and a policeman.
The already fraught Arab-Israeli relationship became even
more so, and the siege led to retaliatory attacks on Palestin-
ian bases. Strumpf ’s photo of that specter with cut-out eyes
is a sobering reminder of how we were all diminished when
the world realized that nothing was secure.