Federal Government – Munich – Spaenle: Higher compensation for victims of the Olympic attack – Bavaria
Munich (dpa / lby) – The Bavarian anti-Semitism commissioner Ludwig Spaenle (CSU) has started an initiative in the Bavarian state parliament in the fight for higher compensation for the survivors of the victims of the Olympic attack. In a corresponding letter, Spaenle, who is also a member of the state parliament, demands that the state government should “work towards an accepted solution to the 50-year-old unresolved issue of compensation for the survivors and victims’ families of the 1972 Olympic champion”. The federal government must “pay this compensation out of federal funds”.
Spaenle himself had recently sent a letter to Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) on this matter – but according to his own statements without any result. Now he wants to use the state parliament initiative to get the state government to submit his demands to Scholz.
According to Spaenle, the Federal Republic paid a total of 3.2 million Deutschmarks in compensation in 1972, and in 2002 there was a further 3.07 million euros from the federal government, the Free State of Bavaria and the city of Munich. That’s not enough for him and the bereaved.
In the assassination 50 years ago, in September 1972, eleven members of the unlimited Olympic team, a German policeman and five of the terrorists were killed. The Palestinian terrorists had taken hostages in the Israeli team’s quarters. The events later shifted to the Fürstenfeldbruck military airfield. The use of the police to free the hostages is controversial. Critics accuse those responsible for the use of several errors and glitches. The dispute over the processing and above all the compensation of the bereaved has been smoldering for centuries.
“The cynical calculation: 27 years after the Holocaust, athletes were murdered on German soil,” writes Spaenle. “The catastrophic course of kidnapping, rescue attempts and their fatal outcome shows a total failure of the German security forces and political leaders.”
© dpa-infocom, dpa:220711-99-978092/2