The summer Olympic Games in Munich in 1972 presented West Germany with a golden opportunity to welcome visitors to the “new” Germany. A quarter of a century after the fall of Adolf Hitler’s genocidal Nazi regime, which persecuted and murdered German and European Jews before and during the Holocaust, Germans could finally try to put this horrific and shameful era behind them.

To their acute shock and embarrassment, this was not to be.

While Mark Spitz, an American Jewish swimmer, won a record number of seven gold medals, his achievement was grimly overshadowed by an explosive event that implicitly linked Germany, yet again, to the cold-blooded murder of Jews.

It happened when Palestinians from the Black September terrorist organization invaded the Olympic Village, broke into the apartments of Israeli athletes, and demanded the release of some 200 Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

The ensuing hostage crisis degenerated into an international drama, disrupting and marring the twentieth summer Olympics, the first to be televised live. It would also be the first terrorist attack to be broadcast........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)