In Memorium for people I never knew... the Israelis 40 years ago

I caught something on MSNBC last nite.  Israel asked London for a moment of silence to commemorate the killing of their wrestling team in Munich in 1972. At the opening.  London said no.

 It IS the forty year anniversary of that horror....it would have .been a memorial service, one that gets world-wide attention.  Better to consider another venue, maybe, because they surely deserve that.

And I should know, because I can still see them in my head, oh they deserve to be remembered.  They carried this infectuous joy with them all the time, I SAW them daily out in the village, and they really stood out.

Everyone else marched around and socialised in their own team groups, but not them, oh no, they had the virus...  here is the whole world, and we're curious, and friendly, and interested.  There wasn't a day I wouldn't see them and admire them...  for being what it was 'supposed' to be about. 

So they were burly guys, wrestlers, sure.  But they exhibited a real joy in being there, and the tremendous opportunity of meeting 'da world' in one very small.... if seemingly gigantic place.  To us, at the time.

I would so loved to have met one of them personally, but was too shy.  They were Olympians.  In every sense of the word.  And I admired them for being THAT outgoing, sort of cuddly teddy bears.  (Wrestlers don't have slight physiqes.)

I will never forget the morning it went wrong.  And a colleague named Peter K woke me up and said, 'It's over, you can pack and get ready to go home'  And I said, 'what in the WURRLD are you TALKING about?'

And he told me.  And it all happened about three hundred meters from where we had been working, I had the night shift.  And don't think I slept more than three hours a night those nine weeks.

Well, I knew where it was, and hauled ass down there to see what was going on.  And that guy with the white mask was on the balcony, I was 100 feet away...  but the press, oh lordy, they really got me riled.  Overhearing inside specualation that someone inside the village---us---let them in, dirty commie students... 

Which led to a thousand sun hatred for them for decades...   except  twenty years later, whaddaya know, some drunk 'miurkins' helped the fuckers over the fence.  Way to go.

They were oblivious, and btw...  they were from 'Havid' and 'Yale' and were in groups and we were bugs.  High school multiplied to the nth degree. 

Up on the turf, everything seemed normal, but below were lots of inroads and venues and I nearly got shot trying to get my mail.  Two lines of soldiers at the entrance, and being naive, I thouth, 'good, we're safe'.  And used to have a fast walk, so I got barked at like out of a horror nazi movie...  'Stop!  Not so much haste!  Whaddaya want?', and boy his finger was itching on the trigger. I skidded into the muzzle, stopped, and said, 'I'm getting my mail'.  'Go to the other door.'  'We're not allowed there.'  'Today you are.'

There was an army down there.

Everything, everything was fully up in the air.  Other than that we had to work in the carfeteria that night...  So I was getting ready for my 11 pm shift, where we'd eat first, and begin at midnight, and all of a sudden the sound system went off and told us to stay inside.  My friend Eamonn had just arrived to accompany me to the caf.  'And I signalled him to be very quiet.  And put out the lights.  We were on the sixth floor.

And we took off our white smocks, and slinked out onto the balcony.  It faced the BMW building.  Below, two helicopters had landed on the strip below leading to the underground part of the village.  And then it happened. 

Two busses pulled up to the helicopters and stopped, and there were flood lights, I think.   We cringed down a bit.  And the bus doors opened, and the terrorists brought the team out it two groups, tied like cattle.  And they were so rough with them, it was horrible.  They shoved them into the helicopters, and they took off for the airport.  I was shaking with disbelief and anger like I've never felt before.  And looked at Eamonn and said, 'I don't think this is gonna end well....'

And we got the all clear to go to work.

Well, the best anyone had was a transistor radio, and the machines in my area were so interfering, we only got it in bursts and splashes of news.  By morning, we knew they were lost.

There was talk of ending the games.  Oh, man, that brought out the worst in people who everyone was looking up to...  the less said the better.  This is about the victims.

I repressed it at the time, over time.  But those faces have never left me, the pure joy, the light in their eyes, so warm all you wanted to do was meet them and be in their circle. 

Unfortunately, it never happened.  But they were good people, and deserve remembering, so if London won't, I am proud to say, 'yes, I remember them, vividly, fondly and with horror over what happened to them.  I remember them always laughing so heartily, such joy.  Which makes it more tragic.

When I went there, it was to meet the worrrrrllld, and I did., and so did they.  And no matter what anyone says, that was the mother of huge, horrible terrorist attacks.

I fail to see how anyone would not want to set up some sort of remembrance ceremony even after forty years.  Gawwd, betcha they'll still be doing 9/11 remembrances in 2050, wiht the name reading and the whole shebang?  Am sure.

Munich was a warning.  There is new evil in the world.  And crap on whoever gets in the cross-fire.

Why can't they do something for those very decent men?

So yeah...   I WILL remember all my days.  I was so traumatized by it all, I refused to ever watch a documentary about it. 

But I remember their faces, their laughter, their smiles.  Many people lost much that day, and the world its' innocence.  RIP, guys, wherever you are.

And my take?  Avery Brundage saying the Games must go on?  NO.  I know they think it must have been 'stubborn courageous'.  It was a time for mourning.  Except many didn't feel that way.

I look at the brouhaha over Columbine, and Aurora now...  did we learn anything other than to mourn?

It's just a question.  Why shouldn't they deserve 'a moment', even after so long? 

It's about humanity lost.