It was a pitch-black day for the sport. As supervisor and translator for the Middle East delegation, Shlomo Levy (b. 1942) witnessed firsthand the Palestinian terrorists’ raid on Munich’s Olympic village, in which eleven Israeli hostages were killed. The tragedy of September 5, 1972 still seems like a “bad, terrible dream” to the 80-year-old. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t,” Levy says tearfully. He was employed by Israeli television for 40 years. The father of three lives with his family in Tel Aviv. He recently visited the Bavarian capital again to preview a documentary film that had been made about him.
WORLD: Mr. Levy, for the first time in 50 years you recently visited the apartment where you lived wall to wall with the members of the Israeli team during the games. What was going through your mind?
Shlomo Levy: It’s not easy to put that into the right words. I didn’t think that returning to this place would take me so emotionally. You can see how touched I am just to talk about it. Look, I’m getting goosebumps. The Israeli delegation had six two-story apartments and I stayed in number six. Now a woman lives there who told me that the six apartments were empty for many years because no one wanted them.
WORLD: What was the reason?
Levy: The cruel events of that time. The people were afraid in these four walls, the woman said. She allowed me to take another look around the apartment. I looked at where I slept, where I phoned the Israeli media when they asked me for information about the assassination, I looked out the window through which I watched the assassins. This direct contact with the past left me in a state of shock. The haunted memories reopened old wounds that had long since healed.
WORLD: How did you experience September 5, when at 4:10 a.m. eight members of the “Black September” terrorist group climbed over the fence of the Olympic men’s village, broke into the house at Connollystraße 31 and took eleven hostages, like a German police officer and five assassins lost their lives?
Levy: The day started for me at seven o’clock with a call from a radio station in Jerusalem. I thought to myself: Funny, why are they calling me from Israel at this time? I could hardly open my eyes. The night before, I went to the theater with the team at the invitation of the Jewish community in Munich. We went to the musical “Anatevka”. I wasn’t in bed until half past one and was therefore still drowsy when the phone rang so early. On the other end of the line, a woman’s voice asked me if I was Israeli, if I lived with the Israeli team. I answered her question in the affirmative, to which she said: “Now can you tell us how the assassination started and how the situation is now?”
WORLD: What did you answer?
Levy: I was totally perplexed, thought I misheard. What is the woman talking about? Attack? What kind of assassination did she mean, I asked myself, confused, and replied: Why are you asking me such a strange question? I hadn’t heard of a robbery as the terrorists hadn’t broken into my apartment, where I lived alone. When the woman then said that there had probably been a terrorist attack on the Israeli team with the taking of hostages, I told her that I would immediately go to the Chef de Mission Shmuel Lalkin, who lived next door to me, to ask him what was going on. I rang his doorbell, but nothing happened. He’s still asleep, I thought to myself. I said to the caller, “I’m sorry, it’s quiet here.” It was still quiet far and wide. The street was empty, no one was to be seen. Then I went back to bed.
WORLD: How did it go?
Levy: Ten minutes later I got the next call, this time from a Tel Aviv journalist from the Ma’ariv newspaper. He asked me the same thing that the woman on the radio had asked before. I told him that ten minutes ago I was on the street and didn’t see anything special, but I’m ready for him to go outside again. This time the picture was completely different.
WORLD: Tell me.
Levy: When I came out I saw a man in a nice light colored suit. He was standing about twenty feet away from me, seemingly relaxed, talking to a police officer. It never occurred to me that it was the terrorist leader who was talking and would die hours later. The smartly dressed man noticed that I saw him but didn’t react. Very different from the Israeli team doctor, who lived in apartment number four and already knew what had happened. He sat behind the barred window of his living room and gestured for me to return to my apartment immediately. Which I did.
WORLD: And then?
Levy: The first thing I did was call the police in Munich because I suspected that they already knew something specific about the attack. However, I received only vague information that terrorists were taking hostages, and I was advised not to leave my apartment, as this would put my life in danger. After giving this information to the newspaper editor, I had to make a decision. Should I rather stay where I am or leave the apartment to get to safety? In addition to my studies as a political scientist, I worked for the Südwestrundfunk television, so I didn’t think long about what I had to do. I was determined to capture what was happening around our building and the partially masked faces of the terrorists on camera.
WORLD: How did you manage that?
Levy: I went to the opposite building where the GDR team was housed. The best photos can be taken from there. When I entered the house, however, I was turned away because the presence of an Israeli could endanger the GDR athletes, they said. But I didn’t give up, telling them that this is my third time on the street and I won’t go anywhere else and stay here. I was lucky that a high-ranking federal police officer suddenly approached me. He told me he knew who I was and if there was anything I needed I should tell him and he would organize it. In the excitement I forgot my camera at the apartment, so I asked him to get me a camera with a telephoto lens and films. Which worked perfectly.
WORLD: Where did you take your photos from?
Levy: The policeman put another Bundeswehr soldier at my side and took me to a room on the fourth floor. I had a great view of the hostages’ quarters. From the balcony, where I put a mattress to protect myself, I could see very well what was happening in the Israeli shelters and in front of the building. So I not only took photos of the armed terrorists and the hostages, but also of the Interior Minister at the time, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, how he negotiated with the assassins, of the mayor of the Olympic Village, Walther Tröger, and of envoys from the Arab League. I stayed on the balcony until shortly before midnight.
WORLD: Did you have contact with the Israeli team during this time?
Levy: No. I was only in contact with the Israeli television press center. The Bundeswehr soldier brought my films there or gave them to other journalists from Israel. The “Stern” also got photos of me. It was the only publication that paid me a small fee. Basically, I just randomly distributed the more than 30 films with 36 images each.
WORLD: Normally you could have done a lucrative business with it.
Levy: It wouldn’t have been me though. It was only important to me that the rest of the world found out as quickly as possible what was happening in the Olympic Village. I didn’t find out until much later that the hostages had been killed. At first it was said before midnight that all the hostages had been freed, but shortly afterwards it became a sad certainty that they had lost their lives during the amateurishly planned rescue operation at the airport in Fürstenfeldbruck. Despite this incredible catastrophe, I thought it was good and right to continue the games after a short break. I saw it as the greatest triumph of the Games ever. One must never bow to the blackmail of terrorists.
WORLD: How did you actually get your job at the summer games?
Levy: As already mentioned, I studied political science in Tübingen. Six months before the games, I read an advertisement in the newspaper that they were looking for interpreters and supervisors, so I applied and was immediately accepted. I was also hired for the team from Cameroon because I speak French in addition to Hebrew, English and German. I was also happy about this job because it allowed me to get to know Germany even better. At that time I came to Germany without speaking a word of German. But I definitely wanted to study there to get my own picture of the country and its barbaric World War II past.
WORLD: What were your experiences when you returned home after a four-year stay?
Levy: Except for the Olympic assassination, I haven’t had a single bad experience. Not once have I been confronted with anti-Semitism. If you look at today, you may not believe it, but that’s how it was. I felt incredibly comfortable in your country, I got to know a generation of young Germans who had learned their lessons from the past. I am still in contact with some of them today.
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