Memory of Olympics terror still vivid for survivor

Dani Alon peered out his dormitory window like a child who can’t resist a peek at the bogeyman. This time, the monster was real. Hooded figures from the Palestinian terrorist group Black September were rounding up members of the Israeli Olympic team and herding them into an adjacent apartment.

Staccato gunfire and shouting broke what had seemed an oddly quiet dawn in Munich, Germany.

Israeli wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg lay still on the pavement outside, a pool of blood forming a halo around his body.

Inside Alon’s apartment, confusion and fear gripped the five remaining team members as they debated what to do.

“It was the most terrifying and terrible day of my life,” Alon said. “I think about it always.”

On Sept. 5, 1972, the sanctity of the Olympics was shattered forever when two Israeli Olympians were killed and nine more taken hostage and then killed along with five of their Palestinian captors in a botched rescue attempt by German police at a nearby airport.

For 34 years, Alon has kept silent about that day.

“Nobody ever asked me,” he said. “They weren’t interested in the survivors.”

But with the 2005 movie “Munich” raising awareness of that seminal moment in the development of modern terrorism, Alon is telling his story.

The 61-year-old will be the keynote speaker for the Aug. 6 opening ceremonies of the JCC Maccabi Games, a weeklong, Olympic-style athletic competition for Jewish teens being held in Scottsdale and boasting more than 2,000 athletes from around the world.

The message Alon will deliver is a familiar one for a community forever scarred by the Holocaust.

“You have to learn from history so you don’t repeat it,” said Alon, an Olympic fencer in 1972. “For the first time in history, someone attacked the Olympics. We must teach this to the world — remind the world so that it never happens again.”

FORTUITY OR FATE

Alon will never know why he chose apartment No. 2 when he arrived in Munich three weeks before the Games. He had come for an exhibition against the West German team, along with fellow fencer Yehuda Weinstein and coach Andrei Schpitzer.

The middle of three apartments designated for the Israeli team just felt right.

“That was the first of many times that a simple choice was very important,” Alon said.

Choice also played a role in Schpitzer’s death.

On Sept. 3, Schpitzer received permission to visit his newlywed wife and their 3-month-old child in The Netherlands. Schpitzer was due back in Munich on the 4th, but he missed his train. Instead of remaining in Holland one more day, as his wife had requested, they drove to two more stations before he finally caught a train back to Munich.

“We were sitting in our room talking about it and at the time I didn’t think anything of it,” Alon said. “Later, I realized it was crucial.”

Several hours later, the terrorists broke into apartment No. 1, where Schpitzer was sleeping, seized the Israeli coaches, then rounded up the weightlifters and wrestlers in apartment No. 3.

Weinberg and weightlifter Joseph Romano were killed by automatic gunfire at the apartments. The other nine, including Schpitzer, died of terrorist gunfire or hand grenades after German police launched their rescue attempt on the tarmac at Furstenfeldbruck military air base.

“I’ve thought about this so many times but I’ll never know why I lived and others died,” Alon said. “Did God tip me or was I just lucky?”

INSIDE THE CHAOS

As Alon watched the drama unfold outside he could hear the shouts of one of the terrorists.

“He was shouting in German that they had already killed two Israelis,” Alon said. “He was demanding the release of 150 Palestinians in Israeli prisons or they would kill the rest of the hostages.”

The five remaining team members were paralyzed with indecision. Two of them were Olympic shooters and had their rifles in the apartment, so a rescue attempt of their teammates seemed an option.

“But we didn’t know how many terrorists there were and if they would kill all the hostages if we tried to save them,” Alon said. “In the end, we decided to escape.”

To do so, they had to jump over a balcony and climb a noisy set of wooden steps behind the dormitory before reaching the German police.

Every five seconds, another teammate jumped and then it was Alon’s turn.

“As I started up the steps I couldn’t resist turning around to look,” Alon said. “There was a terrorist on the balcony next to ours with a machine gun in his hand. I saw him, he saw me and we watched each other for a few moments but he didn’t shoot.

“He died later in the field and I’ve always wondered why he didn’t shoot me.”

A MOMENT OF PAUSE

As Alon later sifted through his slain teammates’ possessions, the weight of the loss intensified with each new discovery.

“Most of the athletes were young fathers and husbands and had bought a lot of presents and toys to bring home for their babies,” Alon said. “They were scattered around the apartment and covered in blood.”

Not a day passes that those images don’t flood Alon’s mind.

“I couldn’t sleep for one year afterward,” he said. “It never fades.”

Nor does he want it to.

“The victims’ families in Israel have been trying for 34 years to have the International Olympic Committee (honor) a moment of silence in the opening ceremonies,” Alon said.

For 34 years, the IOC has refused.

“It’s not the IOC’s policy to stage special ceremonies,” retired IOC director general Francois Carrard told USA Today several years ago.

But IOC spokesman Emmanuelle Moreau said the IOC has paid tribute to the Munich victims in the past, including visits by the IOC president to various memorial services.

During the closing ceremonies of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch called for a moment of silence to remember the victims of the Centennial Park bombing in Atlanta and the Munich victims.

“The tragedy was a defining moment in many ways, not least of all on the security front,” Moreau said. “One thing is certain: We will never forget.”

But for Alon, the IOC’s periodic efforts are not enough.

“These men died for the Olympic ideal,” he said. “The opening ceremonies are three or four hours long. You can spare one moment to remember.”

The memory of that day has given Alon a firm perspective on Israel’s current conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon.

“I don’t believe in bloodshed,” he said. “I don’t think bloodshed brings peace. I think it brings more bloodshed.

“The solution has to come from another place. We’ve been killing each other for years and what has been solved?”

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The 11 Israeli athletes and coaches killed at the 1972 Olympics

Moshe Weinberg: wrestling referee/coach, 33 Eliezer Halffin: wrestler, 24 Mark Slavin: wrestler, 18 Ze’ev Friedman: weightlifter, 28 Joseph Romano: weightlifter, 32 Kahat Shor: shooting coach, 53 David Berger: weightlifter, 28 Joseph Gottfreund: wrestling referee, 40

Andrei Schpitzer: fencing referee/coach, 27

Amitsur Shapira: athletics coach, 40

Yaakov Springer: weightlifting referee, 50

The six survivors Dani Alon: fencer Yehuda Weinstein: fencer Henry Hershkovitz: shooter Zelig Struch: shooter Shaul Ladani: walker *Gad Zabari: wrestler

* Zabari was originally taken hostage but escaped down a parking ramp after shoving aside a terrorist’s gun.