Editor’s note, July 2012: As the 40th anniversary of the deaths of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches and a West German police officer approach, and as the 2012 London Olympics games begin, a call for some recognition of the Munich Massacre goes unheeded by this year’s organizers. We present this piece, written by our co-founder, David Twersky, in the September of 1972, in aftermath of that tragedy.
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JSP Feature, September, 1972
Editor’s note: David Twersky, a JSP staff writer, here attempts to put together some reactions to the Munich Massacre. David is a student at CCNY, a former chairman of the NAJS [North American Jewish Students] Network, and a participant in the Soviet Jewry Freedom bus which travelled North America in 1971-1972.
How can we react to the slaughter of the Israeli athletes? Can we fix the blame? Can we even conceive which questions to ask?
… yet in Munich they asked if the games should go on
… yet in Jerusalem — how and where the army should retaliate was the subject of conjecture
… in countless newspaper columns and editorials — how shocking were the killings and how dare they commit such an act at the Olympics! (as if somehow the spirit of brotherhood supposedly embodied in the games was of greater import than the lives of those killed in full bloom)
In her New York Post column Harriet Van Horne places both the Israelis and the Arabs outside the pale of civilization, as though the great standard bearers of the civilized world have been exemplary models of conduct.
… in Munich the Egyptian delegation fled back to its own country, while in Cairo Sadat would not answer Willy Brandt’s telephone calls
.. in Tel Aviv people went to sleep after the announcement that all the hostages were safe and woke up to the death report. People cried openly on the streets thought thoughts soon turned to anger and vengeance.
Israeli newspapers had to rely on their sports’ (sic) reporters to tell the public what had happened: “Now 6,000,0011,” one wrote. “One again Jewish blood is spilled on German soil,” wrote another. Today in Europe no Israeli walks the streets without some trace of fear; Jews look over their shoulders in Europe — just because they are Jews. And just a few miles away, Dachau…
A few days before the kidnapping and killing, there had been a memorial service at Dachau. Only a small percentage of the Israeli athletic delegation had attended the event. Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon had demanded an inquiry as to why.
And now in New York the Security Council met in emergency session while Israeli planes were attacking guerilla encampments in Lebanon and Syria. The newspapers were pained by the bombing of a village which resulted in the death of children and women. The Lebanese claimed that no guerillas remained in these areas — the Israelis claimed they were there. The BBC sent a film crew which videotaped dead children in a Lebanese village. Main in Israel attack (verbally) “yefay nefesh”; i.e., “bleeding-heart liberals”.
There are main ironies in this story — deep, moving ironies. With due concession to the sports columnists’ ill-titled story, Jews were innocent victims of killing Germany once more. German innocence here is not the point; of course, they did what they could. But a real factor in many minds, especially German and Jews, was the setting of the Olympics and of the tragedy. The last time an Olympics was held in Germany: 1936 in Berlin. America embarrassed Hitler by presenting him with a black gold medal winner, Jesse Owens. But not wishing to embarrass the Fuhrer twice they pulled two Jewish runners from the last race. One was Marty Glickman, presently employed as the radio broadcaster for the New York Giants football games.
… Once again a few miles from Dachau…
How ironic that the Egyptians ran home, perhaps afraid of Black September. Now Jews, too, have a “Black September”, a month for collective mourning. The Egyptians were out of German before Mark Spitz was out of the water.
How can we understand the sweep of the tide of history? Only this way: Black September was succeeded in its wild scheme. The world is polarized again, especially the mideastern world. Peace will be missing from the marketplace conversation and from government planning. No one among the Israelis will talk about the rights of Palestinians as a people. And this is the greatest iron of all for the Palestinians. For only by working together with the Israelis will they achieve a just solution to their problem and ours. That their actions shouls (sic) serve to postpone this long awaited dream, sadly, makes no sense at all.
David Twersky was a co-founder of the Jewish Student Press Service. He went to work as an editor at The Forward and The New York Sun, as the editor of The New Jersey Jewish News and at the American Jewish Congress. He also lived for a time at Kibbutz Gezer, where he was the editor of an English publication of the kibbutz movement called Shdemot. He passed away in 2010.
The article was distributed by the Jewish Student Press Service, which today publishes New Voices Magazine. In 1972, JSPS was less than two years old, and served as a wire service for a then-thriving network of independent Jewish student publications all over North America.
