September 5, 2021 marks 49 years since 11 Israeli athletes were taken hostage by eight members of the Palestinian Black September faction, who broke into the Israeli delegation accommodation at the Olympic Village in Munich, Germany, during the 1972 Summer Olympics.
After gaining access to the Israeli athletes' apartments by scaling a chain-link fence carrying duffle bags loaded with grenades and assault rifles, the terrorists shot and killed Yossef Romano, a weightlifter, and Moshe Weinberg, a wrestling coach.
Leaving with nine hostages, the next 24 hours were filled with tense negotiations between the hostage-takers and authorities. Black September demanded that in return for the athletes and coaches, 236 prisoners incarcerated in Israel would be released and safely transported to Egypt.
After two failed rescue attempts (one of which had to be scrapped as the West German police saw that their preparations were being watched on live television), the captors demanded they and the nine hostages be flown to an Arab country. They were flown in two helicopters to the Fuerstenfeldbruck airport near Munich.
The helicopters arrived late on September 5, and upon landing, five German snipers opened fire. When the terrorists were cornered, they turned their weapons inside the helicopters, killing the nine hostages soon after midnight on September 6.
The nine killed were Ze'ev Friedman, David Berger, Yakov Springer, Eliezer Haflin, Yossef Gutfreund, Kehat Shorr, Mark Slavin, Andre Spitzer and Amitzur Shapira, as well as Weinberg and Romano at the village. Five of the terrorists were also killed, plus a West German police officer.
The three surviving terrorists were taken into custody, but were released on October 29 in exchange for hostages onboard hijacked Lufthansa Flight 615, and went into hiding in Libya.
After the massacre, then-prime minister of Israel Golda Meir authorized the Mossad to track down and assassinate those allegedly responsible, in what became known as "Operation Wrath of God." The 2005 Stephen Spielberg movie Munich was based on these events.
The Summer Olympics this past summer in Tokyo was the first time in almost 50 years that the Olympic Committee acknowledged the massacre, holding a minute of silence ahead of the opening ceremony.