“I sent him to his death.” The opening sentence from the documentary Ankie, the Olympic widow shows how the main character still struggles with guilt after 50 years. If she hadn’t let her great love, the Israeli fencing coach Andre Spitzer, trace back to Munich – he missed the train in Den Bosch but caught up with the same train in Eindhoven in the nick of time – he would have escaped the Palestinian hostage situation the following night. the Olympic village and the massacre a short day later at an airport in Munich.
Ankie Spitzer was recently married to her fencing teacher in The Hague. They had a few months old baby who had been left with Grandma and Grandpa when they traveled to Munich together. Little Anouk cried continuously and mother Ankie persuaded father Andre to go to comfort their baby in the Netherlands. Then he wanted to go back to his sports friends in Munich. And she let him go.
‘Last time I saw your father’
She followed the hostage situation like millions of television viewers (and the kidnappers who took advantage of it) on German TV. She saw him briefly in daylight, he was the only one of the hostages to speak reasonable German and would speak to a team of negotiators from an open window. The moment they wanted to know more details, he was forcefully pulled back into the room. “The last time I saw your father alive,” Ankie says to her daughter Anouk (who would never have cried after that), when they returned together to the scene of the accident.
Andre Spitzer is killed the same evening with eight other Israelis during the failed liberation action at the military airfield Fürstenfeldbruck. “We thought ‘it was impossible’, but it was possible,” says Ankie Spitzer in the diptych that premiered on Thursday evening in the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam and will be broadcast on NPO1 on NPO1 on Sunday and Monday evening by KRO-NCRV. September 5 marks the 50th anniversary of the Munich tragedy.
Ankie Spitzer is better known in the Netherlands and Belgium as Ankie Rechess, the name of her second husband from whom she now lives separated. She is Israel and Palestinian Territories correspondent for NOS and VRT. She knows colleague Twan Huys, who made the documentary with Evert-Jan Offringa. “It will of course never be over for me,” Rechess says. „I get up with Munich and go to bed with it. After fifty years we now know more about what happened, it is time for everything to become clear.”
It will never be completely over for me
Ankie Rechess widow of Andre Spitzer
Two shots straight to the heart
Ankie is followed in her hometown near Tel Aviv, back to Munich, to the archive where she sees the autopsy report half a century later. Two shots had hit her husband right in the heart. So he was probably dead right away, she says, almost relieved.
Rechess travels to Palestinian territory with the Dutch camera crew and hears for the first time the name of the man who shot Andre and the other eight. Two other Israelis had been murdered before in the Olympic village.
Black September terror group demanded the release of 234 Palestinian prisoners in Israel. Prime Minister Golda Meir did not want to yield to blackmail, so do not negotiate. She banned a specialized commando unit led by later Prime Minister Ehud Barak from flying to Munich to do the job. He had to stand idly by as the Germans made a mess of the liberation action, resulting in a bloodbath.
In addition to the nine Israeli hostages, five Palestinian hostage-takers were also killed at the airport. The other three were arrested but released a month later, “in exchange” for ending a hostage situation on a Lufthansa plane. The Israeli secret service would have subsequently liquidated two of these three, the official read was. As it turns out, in addition to Jamal al-Gashey, Mohammed al-Safady is also still alive.
Rechess misses the opportunity to look her husband’s killer in the eye half a century later. Safady has given one interview and is contractually not allowed to talk to anyone else, a Fatah official said. Rechess overhears in a corner of the room. On the wall is a photo of PLO leader Yasser Arafat.
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Tarzan
Precisely this week, ‘Tarzan’, Safady’s nickname, can be seen and heard in the four-part Terror at the Games: Munich ’72. He’s been in hiding from the Mossad for 50 years. The mustache has turned into a beard. He doesn’t regret his act for a moment, he says. Safady shot the Israelis at the behest of the hostage leader. If anything went wrong, the deal was that the hostages would be killed.
Rechess shows no understanding for the action. “I cannot bear the burden of the entire Palestinian people on my shoulders.” Cynically: „They have achieved their goal. Put Palestine on the map.”
About the perpetrator’s lack of compassion, she says: “That shows what kind of person he is. Of course I want him to appear in court, but for me this chapter is over. I wanted to know exactly what happened for myself and my daughter. That has now ended.”
Read alsoThis book review about Munich ’72
Minute of silence
Her fight against the German government is almost over. She and other relatives made three demands: public apologies, the opening of all archives about the hostage situation and the aftermath and compensation for the relatives. The first two requests have been granted – the third requirement appears to be being met just this week. German media reported on Wednesday that an agreement has been reached, according to news agency DPA, it concerns compensation of 28 million euros. Rechess had engaged the Dutch lawyer couple Knoops.
The German government’s compensation seems well-timed. Monday is the official commemoration in Munich and in addition to Israeli President Isaac Herzog, IOC President Thomas Bach also threatened to stay away in protest.
The International Olympic Committee was at odds with the Rechess family for decades. Ankie and Anouk all that time campaigned in vain for a minute of silence during the opening ceremony of the Games. Their request was only granted in Tokyo last summer. In the stands in Japan we see Ankie Rechess watching in disbelief, with an Israeli companion next to her who captured the whole thing with a camera. “It is very difficult to see emotions in Ankie, but now she was crying,” says this best friend.
IOC President Bach (like Andre Spitzer former fencer) did what his predecessors Avery Brundage (“The Games must go on”), Michael Killanin, Juan Antonio Samaranch and Jacques Rogge. Bach and Rechess can be seen in a close embrace at the IOC headquarters in Lausanne. Both were present at the premiere in Amsterdam on Thursday evening.
Looking back, Ankie Spitzer-Rechess says in the film: “Looking back now, it’s surreal that I had to search for those answers for fifty years. It has been made extremely difficult for us as relatives by the Bavarian and German governments. This documentary has taught me things that I would never have found out otherwise.”
the diptych Ankie, the Olympic widow will be broadcast on NPO1 on Sunday and Monday.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of September 2, 2022