Monroe, NY — For 33 years, Dan Alon didn't speak about the day back in 1972 when 11 of his fellow Israeli athletes were killed at the Munich Olympics. Alon, Israel's champion fencer, said he didn't want to open the wounds.
Survivor Lived to Tell Tale
Monroe, NY — For 33 years, Dan Alon didn’t speak about the day back in 1972 when 11 of his fellow Israeli athletes were killed at the Munich Olympics. Alon, Israel’s champion fencer, said he didn’t want to open the wounds.
When Steven Spielberg’s movie “Munich” came out in 2005, people began encouraging him to speak.
He finally did for the first time at the University of Oxford in England.
He stopped several times during the speech.
Words and emotions stuck in his throat.
A month later he spoke again, at Yale University. His wife and daughter were in the audience, and it was the first time they had heard the story of how the 27-year-old Alon flew to Germany to participate in the 1972 Summer Olympics.
Alon, of Tel Aviv, spoke about the experience again yesterday, to a group of about 50 at the Monroe American Legion. The event was sponsored by Chabad of Orange County.
Alon arrived in Munich two weeks before the opening ceremony with his coach Andre Spitzer to practice with the German fencing team. For reasons he still ponders, Alon chose the second apartment in the building the Israeli team was housed in. His coach and other team members bedded in the first apartment, and the Israeli wrestlers and weight lifters who came later stayed in the third apartment.
In the early hours of Sept. 5, eight members of the Palestinian organization Black September broke into the first apartment, taking the residents hostage and later taking the wrestlers and weight lifters, too.
The team members lied and told the hostage-takers that no Israelis were in the second apartment, saving the lives of Alon and four other athletes.
Alon and his roommates woke up to the sound of an explosion and yelling, and again, later, to the sound of a machine gun. They hid in the apartment before escaping out the back.
The next day held hope, as the escaped teammates were told the hostages would be freed, and then mourning when they heard the news of their deaths.
When Alon returned to the apartments he saw opened suitcases and food still out. Blood covered everything. Among the belongings and blood, Alon said, were toys some of the athletes had bought for their children.
The next morning Alon flew back to Israel with his teammates’ coffins.
“Despite everything, we came here as a team and we flew back as a team.”
