Munich Olympics massacre: the fight for remembrance For 40 years, through nine Olympic Games since that dreadful day in Munich in 1972, Ankie Spitzer has lost neither hope nor determination. And, despite the now-customary rebuff, she has not given up on the 10th Olympiad, shortly to begin in London. All she wants, as the widow of one of the 11 Israeli athletes killed in a terrorist attack at the Munich Olympics 40 years ago this summer, is an official moment of remembrance, a minute's silence, an acknowledgement of lost lives. Her decades-long battle goes beyond personal grief for a passionate love brutally cut short and for a newborn baby left without a father. It is also about the Olympic ideal, which puts the political differences and conflicts between nations to one side in pursuit of sporting excellence and athletic comradeship. Just do it once, and I'll be gone. I just want to hear it," she says at her home in Ramat Hasharon, near Tel Aviv. If they had granted a minute's silence, they would have got rid of us by now. But every four years we come back. We are a pain in the neck for them. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) last month again rejected a request by the relatives of the victims of the Munich massacre, which was carried out by the Palestinian group Black September, for a commemoration at the opening ceremony. Spitzer also received an emollient letter from Sebastian Coe, the chairman of the London organising committee, which she describes with characteristic vim as "bullshit." This year, Spitzer's drive has been reinforced by an online petition calling for a remembrance in London, which has exceeded its goal of 80,011 signatures - one for each seat at the Olympic stadium, plus one for each of the dead Israeli athletes. The families' campaign for official remembrance began ahead of the Montreal Olympiad, which followed Munich, in 1976. "We asked for a minute's silence, or some commemoration, because it was natural in our eyes," says Spitzer. But they told us very clearly: 'There are 21 Arab delegations that will leave if we say something about the Israeli athletes.' So I said: 'Let them leave if they can't understand what the Olympics are all about - a connection between people through sport.' The rejection has been repeated at every subsequent Olympiad. The IOC says it's not in the protocol of the opening ceremony to have a commemoration. Well, my husband coming home in a coffin was not in the protocol either. This was the blackest page in Olympic history. These 11 athletes were part of the Olympic family, they were not accidental tourists. They should be remembered as part of the Olympic framework. The current IOC president, Jacques Rogge, who was an athlete at the Munich Olympics, told Spitzer that rejecting the request had been his most difficult decision but his hands were tied. I said: 'No - my husband's hands were tied, his feet were tied, to the furniture.' It's been 40 years. I feel like a fool, banging on doors every four years. But they have never had such an onslaught as this year. We will do everything in our power to try to change their minds. Rogge and Coe are "nice people," says Spitzer. But they are impotent. I can only come to one conclusion or explanation: this is discrimination. I have never used that word in 40 years. But [the victims] had the wrong religion, they came from the wrong country. Ankie and Andrei Spitzer, a fencing coach, had been married for only 15 months when they travelled to Munich in July 1972. Ankie, from the Netherlands, was 26; Andrei was 27. They left their tiny daughter, two-week-old Anouk, with Ankie's parents in 's-Hertogenbosch, in the south of Holland. A few days later the baby was admitted to hospital for observation because it wouldn't stop crying. After Andrei's events were over, the young couple briefly returned to the Netherlands to see Anouk. On 4 September, Andrei had to return to Munich but missed his train after stopping at the hospital to kiss his daughter goodbye. They raced in their car to the next station along the line, fearing a rebuke if Andrei stayed another day. Andrei leapt aboard the train as it pulled out of the station, with Ankie running along the platform to say goodbye. At around midnight, he called his wife from a payphone at the Olympic village. He said he only had one deutschmark, so we should talk quickly. He said: 'I love you.' That was the last time I heard him," says Spitzer. The next morning, she awoke to a hostage crisis unfolding live before a global television audience. In the early hours, eight Palestinian militants, masquerading as athletes, had broken into the Olympic village and taken 11 Israelis hostage. Their demand was the release of 234 prisoners in Israeli jails. Andrei was among the hostages. We just waited. My family all came, but I didn't want to talk to anyone. I just followed it on television and the radio. The militants said they would start shooting the hostages at noon, one an hour, if their demands were not met - a deadline which was deferred twice during the afternoon. By then, two of the hostages had already been killed. Then suddenly, on TV, I saw Andrei in front of a window. The worst part was that he didn't have his glasses on. It was so humiliating, I knew he couldn't see anything. Then they hit him with a rifle and pushed him back in the room. That was the last time I saw him. An armed German policeman during the seige in Munich. Meanwhile, the German authorities were hatching plans to rescue the hostages, having rebuffed an offer to help from the Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad. The first plan, to have policemen dressed as athletes storm the apartment in which the hostages were being held, was abandoned when it was realised that the Palestinian gunmen were watching live television pictures of the rescue effort being put into place. Another, which involved security personnel dressed as chefs delivering food to the apartment, was foiled when the militants simply instructed them to leave the supplies outside. As the drama intensified, the Games continued, and were only finally suspended late in the afternoon. Finally the gunmen demanded a plane to take them and the surviving nine hostages to Cairo. A new German plan, to take out the militants and rescue the hostages, was laid. Two helicopters transported the group to a nearby airport. But a series of blunders led the Palestinians to realise it was a trap. Just after 10.30pm, one militant threw a grenade into one of the helicopters, causing a massive conflagration. Another raked the second helicopter, containing five hostages, with machine-gun fire. Back in 's-Hertogenbosch, Spitzer was glued to the television. You saw the flashes, heard the explosion and gunfire, but it was dark. I said: 'What the hell is going on?' An hour later, a German government spokesman announced that the Israeli athletes had all been saved, and the Palestinians were all dead. How could this be? We saw the helicopter explode," recalls Spitzer. But my father said: 'This is the official spokesman, it must be right. I'm going to open a big bottle of champagne.' I replied: 'No champagne until I get a call from Andrei.' But the only call came from the Israeli ambassador to The Hague. He said: 'This is wonderful news, now you can celebrate.' He said he was going to bed. Spitzer was not reassured, and made repeated phone calls to the head of Israeli Olympic delegation seeking confirmation. At 3am I said: 'Please, just tell me what is happening.' He said: 'The truth is, I don't know.' Minutes later, there was another announcement on live television: "Our worst fears have been realised tonight ... There were 11 hostages. Two were killed in their rooms yesterday morning, nine were killed at the airport tonight. They're all gone. Five of the Palestinian militants were also dead; three escaped. Desperate to get back to Munich, Spitzer was on the first flight a few hours later. She went to the apartment block which had housed the Israeli athletes, accompanied by another member of the fencing team. We opened the door to the building. [Yossef] Romano [a weightlifter who was the second hostage to be killed] had bled to death slowly in front of the others. His blood was coming down the stairs. Her escort pleaded with Spitzer to go no further. But I had to see where Andrei has spent the last hours of his life. You cannot imagine it. Blood, bullet-holes in the walls, food all over the floor. They didn't even let the hostages go to the bathroom. I looked to see what I could retrieve of Andrei's personal belongings. There was nothing except a little mascot, a toy dachsund, that he had bought for the baby. Ankie Spitzer in the room in the Olympic village where her husband was held. The mascot is now in a museum in Tel Aviv, along with other items belonging to Andrei - his fencing gear, the special kippa he wore for the opening ceremony, the sole photograph of Andrei with his baby. Spitzer has kept two black and white portraits of her husband, which sit on her desk overlooking her garden where the couple's daughter, Anouk, will get married next month. On 7 September, the young widow flew back to Israel with the surviving members of the Olympic team and 10 coffins, including the one containing Andrei's body. Her Dutch family and her child were whisked to a safe house in Holland for 20 days, as the authorities feared they could be at risk of another attempted attack. Spitzer, frantic to communicate with her family, was forbidden direct contact. Eventually, after a clandestine reunion with Anouk at Tel Aviv airport late at night, mother and daughter were kept under Israeli security service watch for six months. Everyone here in Israel thought I'd take the baby and go back to Holland. But I wanted Anouk to understand what happened. I wanted her not to be special. Here, especially after the [1973] Yom Kippur war, there were other children who had lost their fathers. In an unnatural situation, this was the most natural place for her. And I'm still here. Spitzer took on the German government as well as the IOC. They made so many incredible mistakes. Everything went wrong. I wanted all the information from the Germans, I wanted to nail them in court. They insisted they didn't have anything. After 20 years, she was finally given access to more than 4,000 files of documents and 900 pathological photographs. A court case brought by relatives was thrown out on the basis of Germany's statute of limitations. Eventually, an out-of-court settlement was reached with the families, although Spitzer herself opposed a deal. But at least, she says, "it was an admission of responsibility. The money meant nothing. Ten years after Munich, she remarried and had three more children. She became a journalist for a Dutch television channel and - at 66 and now divorced - she is "still running around Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon." She describes interviewing the late Palestinian president Yasser Arafat with shaking hands, the present Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat's widow Suhar, and the widow of Khalil Al Wazir, or Abu Jihad, one of the masterminds of the Munich massacre who was assassinated in Tunis in 1988 by Mossad agents. In none of these interviews, conducted using her professional name, did she disclose her personal history. Many people ask how, with my background, I can report objectively about the Palestinian problem. But I can look at the Palestinian people, and they are not all potential terrorists. The people I meet in Gaza and the West Bank have nothing to do with the massacre in Munich. For two months after Munich, I went around like a raging bull. I wanted someone to pay for this. This peace-loving man I was married to, who didn't do wrong to anyone - they did this to him, and now somebody's going to pay for it. But then I realised I couldn't raise Anouk with hatred in my heart. You cannot live like this, you have to leave it. It is not that I would embrace the guys who killed my husband, far from it, but it has nothing to do with the Palestinian population as a whole. But this happened to me. It's part of my life. I have a daughter who never knew her father. We cannot forget what happened. Following the Munich massacre, Israeli prime minister Golda Meir ordered the Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad, to track down and assassinate those responsible. The mission, known as Operation Wrath of God, spanned Europe, North Africa and the Middle East over many years. Agents eliminated more than a dozen militants connected to Black September and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, plus at least one innocent man, a Moroccan waiter working in Norway. Israel's current defence minister Ehud Barak took part in an operation in Lebanon, in which three Palestinian militants were killed and four others died. Of the eight gunmen who took part in the Munich massacre, five were killed at the airport the same night, and two were either assassinated or died later. One, Jamal al-Gashey, is thought to be alive and living in Jordan.