Olympics 1972: Tragic hostage-taking casts deep shadow over Munich Olympics

On 5 September 1972, a commando of eight Palestinians belonging to the Black September group infiltrated the Olympic village, killing two Israeli athletes and taking nine others hostage.

It was supposed to be the Olympics of joy, according to their motto, but it turned out to be the Olympics of horror.

'Black September'

Dubbed "Black September" in memory of the bloody repression of Palestinian fighters in Jordan in September 1970, the group took Israeli athletes hostage.

The German authorities, keen to forget the country's Nazi past, had put in place a light security detail. The police officers stationed around the Olympic Village at the time of the hostage-taking were unarmed.

Holding the Olympic Games in the Federal Republic of Germany was a symbolic success for West Germany, which wanted to erase the memory of the Nazi Games in Berlin in 1936.

According to Thierry Terret, a sports historian specialising in the Olympic Games, West Germany was also seeking to assert its superiority over its neighbour and political rival, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) which had finished ahead of it at the last Olympic Games.

31 Connollystrasse

"In the end, however, the image of the Federal Republic of Germany was catastrophic: not only did it lag behind the GDR in the ranking of sports nations, but it also showed its inability to respond to one of the worst crises in the history of the Olympic Games, when Black September took Israelis hostage in the Olympic Village itself," added Terret.

It was the eleventh day of the Games, on 5 September, when in the early hours of the morning a commando group of eight Palestinians broke into the Olympic Village. Dressed as athletes, the terrorists gained access to the Israeli men's delegation pavilion at 31 Connollystrasse.

They got in without much difficulty, encountering no obstacles because the organising country had chosen not to put in place heavy security measures to distinguish itself from the Olympics of Shame – those organised by the Nazi regime in Berlin in 1936 – which were placed under heavy police surveillance. 

As they entered the Israeli athletes' flats, the armed group shot dead two Israeli athletes and took nine others hostage.

The German police quickly surrounded the building, but were ill-prepared. Negotiations began. The terrorists had several demands, including the release of some 230 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

As the hours passed, the situation became increasingly confused. Finally, an agreement was reached on the evening of 5 September. The terrorists and their hostages were transferred by helicopter to the military airport near Munich.

17 dead

The hostage-taking, which lasted all day, ended with a poorly organised assault by the German police on the Fürstenfeldbruck air base, north-west of Munich. The operation was a fiasco and ended in a bloodbath. The toll was high: 17 dead, including 11 Israeli athletes, one German policeman and five members of the Palestinian commando.

Meas Kheng has not forgotten that day. The young Cambodian sprinter was supposed to try out the starting blocks on the track. When she woke up on 5 September, there was great confusion in the Olympic Village. The Olympic Village was cordoned off by the police.

“The police were everywhere," she recalled in an interview with RFI.

"They had closed off the passages I had to use. When I arrived at the training centre, I learned that there were problems between the Israelis and the Palestinians. At the time, I didn't really understand what was going on."

Now 77, Meas Kheng remembers not being afraid when she heard that armed men had burst into the Olympic Village.

"In my country, Cambodia, I was used to hearing Khmer Rouge soldiers firing when they attacked my village. I'm no stranger to this kind of insecurity."

And, as she spoke no foreign language, Meas Kheng said she did not really understand what was going on at the time, and quickly lost interest.

"To be honest, I quickly moved on to other things. The important thing for me was to be well prepared. I was very young. I told myself that taking part in the Munich Olympics was about winning a medal. So I refocused on my objective as an athlete: to win."

Considered by Cambodians to be the queen of South-East Asian sprinters in the 1970s, the 100m and 200m runner was the only woman in the Cambodian delegation at the Munich Olympic Games.

The Cambodian team consisted of four swimmers, four athletes and a boxer.

After the Munich Olympics, the head of the Cambodian delegation explained that his athletes had been unable to prepare properly and sufficiently because of the civil war raging in the small kingdom, pitting Khmer Rouge communist soldiers against the armed forces of Lon Nol's Khmer Republic.

Unbeknownst to Cambodia, Munich was to be its last Olympic Games for the best part of three decades.

It would have to wait until 1996 before being able to carry the Olympic flame again.

A tragedy was to isolate and destroy the country: the regime of the Khmer Rouge which, among other things, reduced to zero any sporting activity, any athletic drive, which had no place in their agrarian utopia that would claim nearly two million lives.

It was not until 1993, shortly after the Paris Peace Accords, that the International Olympic Committee once again recognised Cambodia as one of its members, which led to several notable changes in Cambodian sports administration.

It was with the Atlanta Games in 1996 that a Cambodian delegation once again marched under the Olympic flag, at a time when the country was just beginning to reinvent itself.

Since its first Olympic Games in 1956, Cambodia has sent athletes to nine editions of the Summer Games, the last of which were held in Tokyo in 2020.

And the kingdom continues to cherish the same dream as Meas Kheng: to one day win an Olympic medal.