This agreement, immediately welcomed by the Israeli president, puts an end to confidential negotiations held over several decades and comes at the right time, a few days before the commemoration of the terrorist attack, unique in the history of the Olympic Games.

The federal government, as well as the region of Bavaria and the city of Munich will pay 28 million euros to the families of victims of this hostage-taking, which resulted in the death of eleven Israeli athletes, indicated to the AFP a government source.

“The federal government welcomes the agreement with the families of the victims,” ​​immediately reacted the spokesman for Olaf Scholz’s government, Steffen Hebestreit.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog expressed his “gratitude” to Germany for these compensations in reparation for a “historic injustice”.

– Declassified documents –

This sensitive issue of compensation angered the families of the victims, who considered the German government’s proposals too weak and threatened not to participate in Monday’s commemoration in Bavaria.

Fifty years later, neither Germany nor the Jewish state have forgotten the “Munich Massacre”.

On September 5, 1972, eight members of the Palestinian “Black September” organization entered an apartment of the Israeli delegation in the Olympic Village, killing two Israeli athletes and taking nine other members of the delegation hostage, in the hope of exchange for 232 Palestinian prisoners.

The intervention of the German security services at the Fürstenfeldbruck military base, about thirty kilometers from Munich, ended with the death of all the hostages, a bloody outcome for which the West German authorities were held partly responsible. . Five Palestinian attackers had been shot and three others arrested.

The agreement also provides for the establishment of a commission of German and Israeli historians who should have access to documents so far classified to shed light on the attack and the police fiasco.

With this agreement, Germany “is fulfilling its historic obligation towards the victims and their families, in the context of the special German-Israeli relationship”, adds the spokesman.

This agreement must, according to him, “create the conditions to approach a painful chapter of our common history, to recognize it as it should and lay the foundations for a new culture of memory”, hopes Mr. Hebestreit.

– Boycott threats –

The German and Israeli presidents, Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Isaac Herzog, have in the wake of the formalization of the agreement announced that they would both participate in the ceremony organized Monday in Bavaria.

“I would like to express my gratitude for this important step taken by the German government, which takes responsibility for the historic injustice committed against the families of the victims of the Munich massacre and ensures reparation,” reacted Mr. Herzog. in a press release.

The families of the victims had warned on August 11 that they would boycott the commemorations in Germany marking the 50th anniversary of the tragedy, judging an offer of compensation from the German authorities insufficient.

They demanded from the German authorities “public apologies” for “all their errors” and their “lies” in this affair, “to open all” their archives, as well as “fair compensation”.

Berlin then offered 10 million euros, including some 4.5 million already paid in 1972 and 2002, for a new total of around 5.4 million euros for the 23 direct members of the victims.

“They told us that they have to respect what German victims of terrorism receive (…) but in our case it is not a local matter in which the German government is not guilty”, explained the spokesperson for the families of the victims, Ankie Spitzer, describing the German offer as an “insult”.