BPresident Frank-Walter Steinmeier has asked forgiveness from the families of the victims of the attack on the Israeli Olympic team in Munich in 1972. At the commemoration event on the 50th anniversary in Fürstenfeldbruck, Steinmeier said in the presence of the bereaved and Israeli President Yitzhak Herzog: “We cannot make up for what happened, nor what you experienced and suffered in terms of resistance, ignorance and injustice. That shames me. As Head of State of this country and on behalf of the Federal Republic of Germany, I ask your forgiveness for the lack of protection for the Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich and for the lack of education thereafter; that what happened could happen.”
It took 50 years to reach an agreement on adequate compensation. But even the understanding that has now been reached will not be able to heal all wounds, said Steinmeier. On September 5, 1972, Palestinian terrorists took members of the Israeli crew hostage. The liberation action at the Fürstenfeldbruck air base failed. In the end, eleven Israelis, a Bavarian policeman and five terrorists died. For decades, the bereaved from Israel fought unsuccessfully for compensation, an apology and a historical review. An agreement, including compensation for 28 million euros, was only reached last week.
Germany was not prepared for such an attack, but it should have been. “That too is part of the bitter truth,” said Steinmeier. The confession is long overdue that the history of the assassination was also a “history of misjudgments and terrible, deadly mistakes, yes, a failure”. Even 50 years later, there are still far too many unanswered questions, said Steinmeier.
Answers had to be found as to why the surviving perpetrators were deported so quickly and never prosecuted, why the German security forces were so overwhelmed or why files had been kept under lock and key for decades. An Israeli-German commission of historians should now shed more light on this dark chapter. Steinmeier emphasized that the relatives had a right to finally learn the truth.
