COMPARED to the mean, elegant sweep of line that characterizes most modern automatic infantry weapons, the Kalashnikov looks squat and solid. This assault rifle, officially designated as the AK 47, is said to have been invented by a Siberian peasant, at least according to the legend that grew up around it as the most popular weapon of international terror. It is simple and rugged. The 34.2-inch-long gun is made of dark blonde wood—the stock and the pistol grip—interrupted by two structures of dull grey metal. The metal centre section comprises the breech and trigger mechanism, with the magazine projecting down and forward from it in a gentle curve. It holds thirty rounds of 7.62-mm cartridges; short lead bullets with a penetrating core of steel. When set on automatic fire, the Kalashnikov is rated to spit out a hundred of them in one minute, each leaving the short muzzle with a velocity of 2,330 feet per second or about 1,600 miles per hour. It is manufactured in various models in the Soviet Union as well as in many other Communist-bloc countries. When used at short range it can literally cut a man in half.
On 5 September 1972, several of these rifles were taken out from their greasy wrapping and handed to the eight Black September terrorists who were on their way to 31 Connollystrasse, the sleeping quarters of the Israeli athletes at the Olympic Village in Munich.
Though not recognized as such, the fedayeen (the Arab word means “men of sacrifice,” and is often used by Islamic terrorists to describe themselves) were first sighted scaling the six-foot wire fence on Kusoczinskidamm at 4 am. The spot where they entered the Olympic village was about fifty yards from the apartments of the Israeli athletes. A distance of fifty yards can be covered by a group of men walking slowly and cautiously in one or two minutes. However, it was not until 4.25 am that the terrorists inserted a pass-key in the lock of the door leading to the vestibule of Apartment 1 at 31 Connollystrasse. Whether or not they had any assistance during this time in the Olympic Village itself is a matter of speculation.1
The man who heard them first was Yossef Gutfreund, a wrestling referee, a 275-pound giant. Though he might have been uncertain for a moment whether the noise was being made by a roommate—wrestling coach Moshe Weinberger, who was expected to return late and was given a second key—the Arab voices whispering behind the door soon convinced him of danger. In fact that was the word he shouted in Hebrew—“Danger!”—to alert another roommate as he threw his bulk against the slowly opening door.
For the next few seconds eight Arabs tried to push the door open against Gutfreund. The effort both sides expended was sufficient to twist the doorjamb and the metal hinges completely out of shape. It also gained Gutfreund’s teammate, weightlifting coach Tuvia Sokolovsky, enough time to break a window and escape.
Four more occupants of Apartment 1 were not so lucky. Track coach Amitzur Shapira, fencing master Andrei Spitzer, rifle coach Kehat Shorr and weigh tlifting judge Yacov Springer were held at gunpoint, then slapped around and threatened by the Arabs in an attempt to make them reveal where the other Israelis were staying. Each was offered freedom if he would knock on the door of any apartment belonging to other Israeli athletes and gain entrance for the fedayeen. The Arabs did not even bother making such offers to Gutfreund; instead, they tied him up as the captured Samson might have been tied up by their biblical predecessors, the Philistines.
Not getting any help from the Israelis, the terrorists decided to explore 31 Connollystrasse—which also housed the Uruguay and Hong Kong Olympic teams. They missed Apartments 2, 4 and 5 with their eight Israeli occupants,2 but captured the six athletes staying in Apartment 3. They were wrestlers Eliezer Halfin, Mark Slavin and Gad Zobari, and weightlifters David Marc Berger, Zeev Friedman and Yossef Romano. Before they could enter Apartment 3, though, the terrorists had to deal with wrestling coach Moshe Weinberger who had been out late and just then came sauntering down Connollystrasse.
Weinberger was a man roughly Gutfreund’s size, and no easier to deal with. He knocked out one terrorist, and was temporarily subdued only when another shot him through the face. But even though gravely wounded, Weinberger would not give up. After the men in Apartment 3 had been captured and were being herded back along Connollystrasse towards Apartment 1, lightweight wrestler Gad Zobari decided to make a dash for it. Though the fedayeen fired several bursts after him, the little wrestler, zig-zagging across the uneven ground of the compound, actually made it to safety. Weinberger used this opportunity to catch one more terrorist on the jaw, fracturing his mandible and knocking him unconscious. Another terrorist shot him immediately several times in the chest. Weinberger collapsed.
It was now weightlifter Yossef Romano’s turn. Along with his teammate David Marc Berger, he attempted to break through the kitchen window of Apartment 1 before the terrorists could tie him up. Unsuccessful, Romano grabbed a knife from the counter and stabbed a terrorist in the forehead. Too painfully wounded to use his weapon, the Arab retreated but another coming up behind him fired a full burst from his Kalashnikov at Romano at close range. The weightlifter fell. When rescue workers tried to remove his body the following day, it reportedly came apart at the waist.
Weinberger, however, had not yet finished fighting. Instead of crawling away from Apartment 1 after he had come to, the wrestling coach groped his way inside the building to confront the terrorists once more. Taken aback by the bloodied hulk stumbling towards them, the fedayeen did not fire right away. Weinberger actually had time to hit one and, grabbing a kitchen knife, slash another on the arm before being fatally shot in the head.
The time was now around 5 am. In the initial action, lasting about twenty-five minutes, the Black Septembrists had killed two Israeli athletes and captured nine. Two Israelis had escaped. The terrorists failed to locate another eight Israelis in the building.
During the twenty-five minutes of fighting, the security authorities in the Olympic Village apparently received only vague reports about “some kind of trouble” around Block 31 on Connollystrasse. This was not altogether surprising. Most athletes and officials had been sound asleep. The action was sporadic: shouts and bursts of fire followed by periods of silence. People awakened by the noise would not have been able to identify it immediately. They’d listen for a while, hear nothing more, and perhaps doze off again. The few who got up to investigate could see nothing. In the village few nights had gone by without a celebration of some kind. There had often been firecrackers and noisy fun. To many of the Israelis’ sleepy neighbours, the terrorist action sounded like more of the same.
At any rate, it was a lone, unarmed West German security policeman who came to investigate at 4.55 am or shortly thereafter. He fingered his walkie-talkie and muttered “Was soll das heissen?”—a German equivalent of a British bobby’s “What’s all this then?” at the hooded terrorist standing in front of 31 Connollystrasse. Without replying, the Arab disappeared behind the door.
Meanwhile, however, the two escaped Israelis turned in the real alarm—one from the building housing the South Korean team, the other from the Italians’ quarters. Within the next half hour, the authorities received the terrorists’ demands which had been typed up in English in several copies. The fedayeen also threw Moshe Weinberger’s lifeless body into the street.
The demands were for the release of 234 prisoners held by “the military regime in Israel,” whose names were listed on the typewritten sheets. The terrorists named some people held by the Federal Government of West Germany as well, among them the leaders of the Baader–Meinhof gang, Ulrike Meinhof and Andreas Baader, who had been captured by the German police in June that year. The fedayeen also wanted three planes to take them to a “safe destination” after their other demands had been met. There they would release the Israeli athletes. The communiqué gave the authorities until 9 am to comply with the Palestinians’ demands. After that they would execute their hostages “at once or one by one.”
The usual negotiations followed. High-ranking West German officials offered to exchange themselves for the hostages—a courageous gesture on the part of these individuals, a federal and a Bavarian minister, the Mayor of the Olympic Village, a former mayor, and the then Police Commissioner of the city of Munich. But the fedayeen would not accept the deal. The deadline was extended until noon. West German Chancellor Willy Brandt reportedly consulted direct with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in a ten-minute telephone conversation. With predictable results. Israel’s stand in matters of terrorism was well known. No deal. No deal ever, under any circumstances.
Though the Germans did not try to exert any official pressure on Israel, there is much evidence that they regarded the Israeli Government’s attitude as unnecessarily and dangerously inflexible. Why couldn’t they release, say, a dozen of the captured fedayeen? Why not let the terrorists save some face, give up their hostages, and get out of Munich? The Germans, for their part, were willing to hand over Ulrike Meinhof and Andreas Baader to them, and made a point of saying so early in the negotiations.
The talks continued. The deadline was being extended by stages until 9 pm. The terrorists had reduced their demands to one plane which was to fly them and their hostages to Cairo. There, they said, unless the Israeli Government gave up their Palestinian prisoners to them, they would execute the athletes. This, too, was a minor concession from the terrorists’ original threat to shoot the athletes on the spot unless their fellow fedayeen were freed before they took off from Munich.
At 8 pm food was brought to the terrorists and their captives. Chancellor Brandt went on television to deplore the incident and to express his hope for a satisfactory resolution—and also to suggest that the Olympic Games should not be cancelled, which was what the Israeli Government had requested to honour the memory of the two slain athletes. In Chancellor Brandt’s view, this would have amounted to a victory for the terrorists. It was certainly one way of looking at the matter—though to continue with the Olympiad, supposedly symbolizing brotherhood and peace, as if the murders were of no consequence could just as easily have been seen as a triumph for terror. The flags of all competing countries, at any rate, were ordered to be flown at half-mast by the afternoon. That is, until a delegation representing ten Arab countries protested and the Germans obediently restored their flags to the top of the poles.
At around 10.20 pm two helicopters, bound for Munich’s Fürstenfeldbruck airport, lifted off from a grassy enclosure near the Olympic Village. The nine hostages and the eight fedayeen had reached the choppers in a Volkswagen bus. Though the West German authorities, with the full concurrence of the Israeli Government, had already decided that they would not permit the terrorists to fly to Cairo with their hostages, no attempt was made to ambush the fedayeen during the transfer to the helicopters. In retrospect—though hindsight is always easy—this may have meant that the best opportunity was missed.
At Fürstenfeldbruck airport, about fifteen miles from the centre of Munich, events unfolded quickly. Within fifteen minutes, at around 10.35 pm, the two helicopters landed, one carrying four of the Israeli hostages, the other carrying five. The choppers touched down about a hundred yards from a 727 jet that was ostensibly being prepared to take the Arabs and their Israeli captives to Cairo. Four of the fedayeen got out of the helicopters to inspect the plane. Within five minutes—in poor light and from a great distance—five German sharpshooters opened fire on them.
Some of the terrorists were hit; the others returned the fire. The four German crew members of the two helicopters tried to make a run for it. Two made it. The other two were caught in the crossfire and wounded badly. The Israelis could do nothing. They were sitting, tightly bound and blindfolded, in the helicopters parked on the runway.
Perhaps surprisingly, the fedayeen did not kill them right away. They might have felt that this would be playing out their last card. They might have been too busy returning the sharpshooters’ fire and dodging their bullets. They might even have felt a reluctance to kill nine obviously defenceless men: a kind of animal inhibition that has been known to stay the hand of the most desperate murderers. The fedayeen also spurned several German offers to give themselves up, even though they must have known that it would save their lives.
The exchange of fire lasted for about seventy-five minutes. At around midnight, unable to dislodge the terrorists from under the helicopters—and being limited in the firepower they could use by the presence of the hostages—the Germans decided to launch an infantry attack under the cover of six armoured cars. Almost as soon as this attack began, one of the terrorists lobbed a hand grenade into the helicopter holding five of the Israelis. The chopper exploded into a ball of fire. Within a few seconds, two other terrorists shot and killed the remaining four hostages in the second helicopter.
Ironically, had the armoured assault been delayed for another few minutes, Zeev Friedman, Yacov Springer, Eliezer Halfin and the gigantic Yossef Gutfreund might have survived. The four Israeli athletes had somehow managed to loosen their bonds sufficiently—there were teethmarks found on the knots of the thick ropes tying them to their seats—that they might soon have worked themselves free and surprised the two terrorists outside the helicopter. There is little doubt that the Israelis would have tried to take the fedayeens’ weapons and liberate themselves. As for Amitzur Shapira, David Marc Berger, Andrei Spitzer, Mark Slavin and Kehat Shorr in the first helicopter, it was impossible to tell what they might have done. Their bodies were incinerated beyond recognition.
Two of the five surviving fedayeen continued to fight. The police and border-guard units killed one within the next fifteen minutes—the man named Essafadi or “Issa” who was seen throwing the hand grenade into the first helicopter. At around the same time the Germans captured a badly wounded terrorist by the name of Badran. Two more, el-Denawi and “Samir” Talafik, were also captured. They had not been hurt but pretended to be dead.
The last terrorist was a wiry, chain-smoking man named Tony who also liked to have himself referred to as “Guevara.” Whatever human qualities he lacked, physical courage was not one of them. Tony3 kept alternately fighting and eluding the Germans for another hour. He managed to shoot one more border guard in the neck. He was finally cornered and killed at 1.30 am. It was all over.
Next day the Olympic Games continued. That year the Soviet Union won fifty gold medals. The United States finished in second place with thirty-three.
