Eyewitness at Munich

[Fiona]

On the eve of the opening of Steven Spielberg's film "Munich," about the aftermath of the terrorist attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics, we asked Dwight Chapin, a former sports reporter and columnist who was covering the Games, to recount the events of that terrible time.

It's a memory that's still very close to the surface, even after more than three decades, a memory that can be triggered by a single word:

Munich.

That's the title of a new Steven Spielberg movie, but, for me, it will always symbolize something that has nothing to do with celluloid, something very real -- events so powerful they've never left my consciousness.

In the late summer of 1972, I was the only sports reporter covering the Munich Olympic Games for the Los Angeles Times, along with the noted columnist Jim Murray.

I'd had my hands full in Germany for a couple of weeks. It was all sports, all the time, story after story, day after day, food and sleep very much afterthoughts. But my bosses back in California always wanted more. Which is why, on a scheduled off day for track and field competition, Sept. 5, I decided to get up very early and catch the subway to downtown Munich to gather material for a profile of the old German city my editors wanted.

In the early afternoon, I stopped at a cafe for a cup of coffee and noticed a man at the next table holding a French newspaper with a huge headline that said "MORT!" and a photograph of what looked like bodies lying in the Olympic village. I rushed outside and bought my own copy of the newspaper. But my knowledge of French was minimal, and I still was confused about exactly what had happened.

But I could tell that these Olympics were now about much more than fun and games.

I hurried back to the press center to look for my colleague Murray and try to fill in the missing pieces, but he wasn't there. He had gotten into the cordoned-off Olympic village, to the building at 31 Connollystrasse where terrorists in stocking masks had killed two Israeli athletes and were now negotiating with a German government official over the fate of nine hostages.

I found out that Joe Alex Morris, the Times' bureau chief in Bonn, had been brought in to handle the breaking news, and I scrambled to help him, digging whatever information I could out of what had turned into an armed camp.

Throughout the Games, the Germans had bent over backward to try to erase the memories of Nazi militarism and show a benign image to the world, starting with the release of a flock of white doves at the opening ceremony.

The German police at the Olympic site wore light blue uniforms and white caps, which, Murray wrote, made them look "like English schoolboys going out punting on the Thames with a wicker basket full of watercress sandwiches."

But they were dressed very differently when I got back to the Olympic village that day. They wore military garb and World War II-style steel helmets, and they had thrown up barbed wire all around the perimeter. There were tanks, machine guns and armed troops everywhere. The peaceful celebration clearly was over. Jewish blood had again been spilled on German soil, if not by German hands this time.

The Palestinian terrorists -- a group calling itself Black September -- ultimately demanded the release of 200 prisoners from Israeli jails and safe passage out of Germany for themselves, but that didn't happen. At the Munich airport, three of them were killed by sharpshooters, and, in a subsequent gunbattle, the nine hostages, two more terrorists and a police officer died.

Olympic organizers dithered as to what to do about resuming the Games. Nothing happened for 12 hours after the first Israelis were murdered, and, finally, competition was halted for only a day.

Everywhere in the Olympic village, before the decision to keep going had been made, there were impromptu meetings, people agonizing, trying to make sense of what had happened. Some athletes favored calling off the rest of the Games, out of respect for the slain Israelis and the potential for more trouble, others didn't. Many weren't sure.

One of the most memorable sights was U.S. distance runner Kenny Moore -- tall, thin, almost Christlike in appearance -- standing with a swarm of reporters around him, and saying perhaps everyone should go back to competition in plain white uniforms rather than nationalistic symbols.

But the Olympic organizers, mindful of the money that was at stake as well as the Games' future, never considered anything like that. Later that day, at a memorial service in the track stadium attended by 80,000 people -- many of them softly crying -- 84-year-old Avery Brundage, who was in his final days as International Olympic Committee chief, ranted about pressure from African blacks a few days earlier that resulted in Rhodesia's expulsion from the Olympics and railed against the commercialism of athletes endorsing tennis shoes. His stark insensitivity that day remains vivid.

And then Brundage spoke the words that still ring in many ears, including mine.

"The Games," he said, "must go on."

The route back from the track stadium to the press dormitories went through the Olympic village. I detoured briefly to 31 Connollystrasse, where a bank of cut flowers now ran the entire length of the building -- a beautiful profusion of colors in front of the place that had become the focal point of Black September.

The emotion, the anger I'd felt through much of Brundage's speech at the memorial service, came out in a flood of tears that made me feel better, but not much.

The mood everywhere was somber in the last few days of the Munich Olympics. There was fear surrounding what was left of the competition, uncertainty about what might come next. Like a number of other reporters, I covered the closing ceremony from a television set in the press center rather than go to the stadium.

After writing that story, exhaustion finally overtook me. The day after the Games ended, I sought some needed peace and solace in a small hotel on the outskirts of Munich. There was a neighborhood bar on the corner, and while I was drinking a beer there that night, a group of Germans at a nearby table invited me to join them.

After a round or two, one of the men, who spoke only German, insisted that one of his friends who knew English apologize to me -- an American -- for what the Germans had done in World War II.

I asked how old the man was. He was the same age as me. We both had been 7 when the war ended. That he was too young to have borne any responsibility for it didn't matter to him. Not with this sad, new shadow over his country, a shadow that seemingly no one -- least of all the Germans -- saw coming.

sfgate.com

Image: Eyewitness at Munich. A member of the Arab commandos who seized the Israeli Olympic team quarters at the Munich Olympic village on Sept. 5, 1972. Associated Press File Photo