Olympia 1972: How the GDR watched the assassination in Munich NDR.de – history
Status: 03/13/2022 05:00 a.m
At the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, on September 5th, Palestinian terrorists attacked the unlimited quarters in the Olympic Village. 17 people die. Athletes from the GDR witness the deadly kidnapping.
In 1972, the world was visiting Munich: the Olympic Games were cheerful and colorful – until everything changed on September 5th. In the early hours of the morning, Palestinian assassins from the terrorist organization “Black September” attacked the quarters in the Olympic Village. Dramatic hours begin. Athletes from the GDR watch the hostage-taking, their block of flats is directly opposite. Two of them are the handball players Peter Larisch from Schwerin and Klaus Langhoff from Rostock.
Assassination leaves the ’72 Olympics still standing
“Bombing in the Olympic Village!” Klaus Langhoff is awakened that morning with this alarming message. And indeed: Israeli hostages are in the hands of terrorists from the Black September group. The events are soon followed worldwide. Langhoff is an eyewitness to an assassination attempt that brings the Olympic Games to a standstill.
“Don’t go on the balcony!”
“We were told not to go out onto the balcony because drama would unfold on the other side – and we ricochets would hit us,” recalled Peter Larisch. Despite the warnings, the man from Schwerin looks over to the other side. At first it seems as if he is on a film shoot, the situation is so unreal. The terrorists drop a lifeless body in front of the door. It’s one of the hostages. “It took a long time for them to remove it. It was a terrible sight to see a dead athlete lying there,” recalled Klaus Langhoff from Rostock, who was also a handball player in the GDR team at the time.
Attack by the terrorist group “Black September”
Eight members of the Palestinian terrorist organization “Black September” entered the Olympic Village over a fence in the early hours of the morning. At that time, they overwhelmed eleven athletes from the reliable team. Some managed to escape. The dead man in front of the door is Mosche Weinberg, a wrestling trainer – shot while trying to escape. The weightlifter Josef Romano is shot and dies because no doctor is allowed to see him. Among other things, the terror command is demanding the release of 232 Palestinians from indefinite detention, as well as the release of RAF members Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof from German detention.
“The hostage-takers gave us a friendly wave”
Klaus Langhoff observes how the German Federal Minister of the Interior, Hans-Dietrich Genscher (FDP), talks to the terrorists, makes offers, leaves, comes back. “We thought: Now the big politicians are here and trying to regulate this.” Klaus Langhoff also follows everything very closely, with his Praktica he takes photos from the balcony – despite the ban – takes a picture of a food delivery to the hostage-takers. “They always gave us a friendly wave,” says the Rostocker. “They probably knew that we were athletes in the GDR team.”
DDR turns the assassination into a “tragedy”
For the athletes of the GDR team there is a clear instruction from the team management: no interviews. Because the assassination – it is not that easy to condemn for the GDR. They were told: “PLO and Arafat, these are our friends,” recalls Peter Larisch.
Further information
In the early 1970s, the SED leadership and Palestinian functionaries were closely linked politically. For this reason, for a long time there was no talk of an assassination or attack in newspapers and radio in the GDR, says the Rostock sports historian Dr. Juliane Lanz, “but of a tragedy”. According to a commentary on GDR television in 1972, one cannot hide the fact that “we are worlds apart from the political views of the state government, from the aggressive policies it is pursuing in the Middle East. We stood and we stand by the righteous struggle of the Arab peoples”.
The Stasi recorded the events meticulously
The State Security will be fully informed about what happened on September 5th. Informers report directly. This creates a meticulous, secret protocol. 13 pages long. “11:55 am: Snipers are stationed in the GDR team’s building,” it said. “2.40 p.m.: The irregulars offer a picture of calm and self-confidence. […] 16.35: Genscher, Schreiber, Tröger and two other people appear and negotiate.”
Negotiations with the assassins lasted throughout the day and into the evening. The terrorists demand safe conduct and a flight to an Arab country. “10:20 p.m.: Three helicopters fly away one after the other,” says the last entry in the Stasi log. Hostages and hostage-takers are on their way to Fürstenfeldbruck.
17 dead: The Olympic assassination ends bloody
At the airfield there, the assassination ended as it began in the morning – bloody. Negotiators had previously agreed with the terrorists to fly the Palestinians and their hostages to Cairo. Meanwhile, however, the police secretly prepared a rescue operation in Fürstenfeldbruck. An action that fails. Firefights ensue. A terrorist pulls out a hand grenade and throws it into a helicopter. Other hostages are shot.
A total of eleven selected athletes and one policeman are murdered on this day, five terrorists die.
The games go on – and the GDR team stays
The IOC decides to continue the competitions. President Avery Brundage spoke the famous sentence at the memorial service in the Olympic Stadium: “The games must go on!” After the hostage-taking and the unsuccessful liberation campaign, the GDR team is supposed to leave, but then stays. Because: The GDR is also about reputation, about recognition through sporting success. Preparations for Munich have been going on for years. It is here of all places – in the land of the class enemy – that the GDR is allowed to parade with its own flag for the first time, and the GDR anthem is allowed to sound. And from a sporting point of view, things are going well: the team is in third place in the national rankings.
“After the attack, however, the mood was only depressed,” says Klaus Langhoff. Even Peter Larisch can’t let go of the memory to this day – almost 50 years later: The pictures are there again immediately “as soon as Munich ’72 is mentioned.” On the 50th anniversary he will travel to Munich to commemorate the victims.
Further information