The State Archive on Wednesday released 45 documents pertaining to the 1972
Munich Massacre of 11 Israeli Olympians, including one quoting then-Mossad head
Zvi Zamir as saying the German police “didn’t make even a minimal effort to save
human lives.”
The documents were released to mark 40 years since the
massacre, which took place on the night between September 5 and 6,
1972.
“If there is any tangible manifestation of schizophrenia, it was
that night,” thenprime minister Golda Meir said when describing what it was like
to sit with cabinet members and senior aides in her home in Jerusalem and follow
reports of the developments in the operation to rescue the Israeli hostages at
the Fürstenfeldbruck military airfield near Munich. At first there was elation,
when it seemed that the German rescue effort had succeeded. But that elation
turned to despair when it became clear the effort failed, leading to the death
of nine Israeli hostages.
Two Israelis were killed earlier when the
terrorists scaled the fence of the Olympic Village and burst into the Israeli
residence. The other nine were killed, along with five terrorists and a West
German police officer, at the air base where the gunmen had brought the hostages
to fly with them to Egypt.
Zamir, who flew to Germany to observe the
rescue operation – then-defense minister Moshe Dayan planned to go but decided
against it at the last minute because he thought if the terrorists found out he
was there, they would kill the hostages immediately – briefed the cabinet upon
his return to Israel on September 6. The picture he painted was of German
ineptitude and carelessness, including a description of snipers
armed not with special rifles, but rather with pistols and even an
Uzi, and armed personnel carriers that arrived 30 minutes late.
When Meir
interrupted him and said the bottom line was that the Germans wanted to rescue
the athletes, Zamir said, “They did not take the minimum risk to save them. They
lay down behind cover and fired. It was impossible to move anyone from their
cover.”
Zamir later wrote up the main points of his briefing, which was
then translated into English and sent to the West German
authorities.
That was one of the documents released on
Wednesday.
The documents released chronicle the drama and its immediate
aftermath through Foreign Ministry cables; minutes of m e e t i n g s from the
period – of both the cabinet and the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense
Committee; and official correspondence between Israeli and German officials.
Some of the documents have been edited to protect highly classified
information.
The first document, from September 5, 1972, was the initial cable from the Israeli Embassy in Bonn saying the German police reported
that armed Palestinians carrying machine guns took over the Israeli residence at
the Olympic Village and were demanding the release of Palestinian prisoners in
Israel.
The last document, from November 8, were Foreign Ministry minutes
of a meeting Meir had with the German ambassador following the tension that
emerged when Germany released the three surviving Black September terrorists
after the hijacking of a Lufthansa airliner in October.
The documents
show the transition from Israel wanting to give the West German government of
chancellor Willy Brandt the benefit of the doubt at the beginning of the saga,
to a serious strain in relations that followed the decision to release the
terrorists.
The documents are divided into nine sections:
• Initial
Foreign Ministry reports about the kidnappings until the failure of the German
rescue operation;
• Correspondence regarding the issue of whether the Olympic
games would be stopped or suspended;
• Documents dealing with how the incident
would affect Israeli-German ties;
• The German police’s report on the operation
and Zamir’s harsh criticism of it;
• German disapproval of Zamir’s criticism; •
The establishment of an Israeli commission – the Koppel Committee – to examine
the security arrangements that existed for the Israeli athletes;
• The Meir
government’s response to the Koppel Committee; • Conclusions drawn in the
Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee regarding active and passive
ways to fight terrorists abroad; and
• Israel’s response to the German
government’s decision to release the surviving gunmen after the Lufthansa
airplane hijacking.
The documents provide a glimpse into the furious
Israeli mood at the time, with Meir in a cable to Israel’s ambassador to Germany
advising against Brandt coming to Israel to take part in the funerals. “I don’t
know what will happen to Brandt, how he will be received here,” she
wrote.
Then-foreign minister Abba Eban said at a meeting of the Foreign
Affairs and Defense Committee on September 5 that he was worried about a
situation where instead of the anger being directed at the Arabs, it was being
directed at the Germans.
At that meeting, the question was raised whether
Israel had any warning of this type of attack. Meir responded, “You have no idea
how many pieces of information come through during a 24-hour period about all
kinds of plans, not any specific location.
“In many different countries
murderers have gotten together to kill Jews, to strike at planes and ships, and
you don’t know what else. I am amazed at how much we succeed to protect them,”
she said. “But the world is big, and there are Israelis all over the world, and
it is almost impossible to think it possible to provide absolute protection,”
she added.
The documents also revealed the cynicism of the German
authorities and the International Olympic Committee in refusing Israel’s request
to suspend the Games while the saga was unfolding and the hostages were being
held.
A dispassionate cable from the embassy in Bonn to the Foreign
Ministry on September 5, some six hours after the ordeal began, said that at a
meeting of the German Olympic Committee, the president of the International
Olympic Committee Avery Brundage, and the German interior minister, “it was
decided not to stop the Games. The reasons: 1. the possibility that stopping
them will bother the police efforts [to rescue the hostages]. 2. German
television does not have any alternative programming.”