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Andre Spitzer

Coordinates: 32°07′45″N 34°49′25″E / 32.12917°N 34.82361°E / 32.12917; 34.82361
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Andre Spitzer
אנדרי שפיצר‎
Pronunciation/andˈreː ˈʃpɪtsɐ/
Born(1945-07-04)4 July 1945
Timișoara, Romania
Died6 September 1972(1972-09-06) (aged 27)
Fürstenfeldbruck, Munich, West Germany
Cause of deathShooting
Body discoveredFürstenfeldbruck Air Base
Resting placeKiryat Shaul Cemetery
Tel Aviv, Israel
32°07′45″N 34°49′25″E / 32.12917°N 34.82361°E / 32.12917; 34.82361
NationalityIsraeli
CitizenshipRomania, Israel
Alma materWingate Institute
OccupationFencing coach
Years active1964–1972
Known forKilled by terrorists in the Munich massacre
Height5 ft 10 in (178 cm)
SpouseAnkie Spitzer
ChildrenAnouk Yael Spitzer
Parent(s)Tibor Spitzer (father)
Leonora Spitzer (mother)

Andre Spitzer (Hebrew: אנדרי שפיצר; 4 July 1945 – 6 September 1972) was an Israeli fencing master and coach of Israel's 1972 Summer Olympics team. He was one of 11 athletes and coaches taken hostage and subsequently killed by terrorists in the Munich massacre.

Early life

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Spitzer was born in Timișoara in Romania, and was Jewish.[1][2] His parents survived the Holocaust in Nazi forced labor camps.[3] After his father died in 1956 when he was 11, Andre and his mother moved to Israel.[4][5][6] He served in the Israeli Air Force and attended Israel's National Sport Academy, where he studied fencing.[5][7]

In 1968, he was sent to the Netherlands for further instruction in fencing for further training in The Hague with fencing master Abraham. Most of his first year in the Netherlands he stayed with the Smitsloo family in Scheveningen. In 1971, he married one of his students, Ankie de Jongh, who converted to Judaism.[5][8] Andre returned to Israel with his wife soon afterward where, at age 27, he became the country's top fencing instructor.[5] The couple lived in Biranit, Israel, along the border with Lebanon.[9] He helped found the National Fencing Academy, and became chief fencing instructor at the Wingate Institute.[10]

The couple's daughter Anouk Yael was born two months before the Olympic Games.[11][8]

Munich Olympics

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The Spitzers went to Munich with the rest of the Israeli team, but young Anouk was left in the Netherlands in the care of her grandparents.

Ankie Spitzer recalled her husband's idealism and attitude towards the Olympics:

(While strolling in the Olympic Village) ... he spotted members of the Lebanese team, and told (me) he was going to go and say hello to them... I said to him, "Are you out of your mind? They're from Lebanon!" Israel was in a state of war with Lebanon at the time. "Ankie," Andre said calmly, "that's exactly what the Olympics are all about. Here I can go to them, I can talk to them, I can ask them how they are. That's exactly what the Olympics are all about." So he went ... towards this Lebanese team, and ... he asked them "How were your results? I'm from Israel and how did it go?" And to my amazement, I saw that the (Lebanese) responded and they shook hands with him and they talked to him and they asked him about his results. I'll never forget, when he turned around and came back towards me with this huge smile on his face. "You see!" said Andre excitedly. "This is what I was dreaming about. I knew it was going to happen!" (Reeve (2001), pp. 52–53)

Midway through the Olympics, when the Israeli fencers had already competed, the Spitzers were summoned to the Netherlands – their daughter, who was with his wife's parents, had been hospitalized with an incessant bout of crying.[3][8] After they arrived, they were told by the doctors that everything would be fine[9] and that Andre could rejoin his teammates at the Olympics. Andre missed his train, but his wife drove him at breakneck speed to the station in Eindhoven, where he boarded the train without a ticket.[12]

Terrorist attack and death

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Spitzer returned to Munich about four hours before Palestinian members of Black September broke into the Israeli quarters, killed coach Moshe Weinberg and weightlifter Yossef Romano, and took Spitzer and eight of his teammates hostage.[13] The terrorists announced that they wanted 234 other terrorists freed.[9] The terrorists beat the hostages and castrated one of them, leaving him to bleed to death in front of his bound fellow hostages.[14] Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir called Spitzer's wife, and told her the Israeli government "would not negotiate with terror." Spitzer's wife asked, "Why not?" and Meir responded, "If we give in to their demands, no Jew will be safe anywhere in the world."[9]

Israeli hostages Kehat Shorr (left) and Andre Spitzer (right) talk to German officials during the hostage crisis.

Spitzer was seen once during the hostage crisis, standing at a second-floor window in a white undershirt with his hands tied in front of him, talking to the German negotiators.[15] Spitzer, the only hostage who spoke German and English as he learned it in his younger days, so he was the go-between with the German crisis team.[3] At one point, when Spitzer tried to give the negotiators information that the terrorists did not want the negotiators to have about the killing and castration of fellow Israeli hostage Yossef Romano, one of the terrorists clubbed Spitzer in the head with the butt of an AK-47 assault rifle and pulled him roughly away from the window, back into the room.[3][15] That was the last time most people saw Spitzer alive.

After 20 hours of tense negotiations, during which the hostages did not eat and were not allowed to use the bathroom, the hostages and terrorists were flown by helicopter to Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base from which, the terrorists believed, they would be flown by jet to a friendly Arab nation.[3] Instead, the Bavarian border patrol and Munich police attempted an ill-prepared rescue operation, though 15 minutes before the terrorists arrived 17 West German police officers who had been tasked with ambushing the terrorists, dressed as pilots and stewards, took a vote, decided to abort their mission, and left their ambush.[9] After a two-hour gunfight, Spitzer watched as four of his teammates were killed with machine guns, after which a grenade was detonated inside their helicopter. Seconds later, Spitzer and four more of his teammates were then fatally shot by the terrorists.[16] Spitzer was 27 years old at the time.[17] In all, 11 Israeli hostages were killed.[3] Five of the terrorists and a West German police officer, Anton Fliegerbauer,[14] were also killed in the gunfight.

During the hostage crisis (except for a short half-day break, after other athletes protested) and after the 11 athletes were killed, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) chose not to cancel the remainder of the Olympic Games, and they proceeded as planned.[18][19]

One month later, the German government released the three surviving terrorists the Germans had captured and imprisoned who had committed the Munich massacre, as demanded by terrorists who hijacked Lufthansa Flight 615 on 29 October.[18] In the immediate aftermath of the hijacking of as well as on a number of later occasions, concerns were voiced that the event might have been staged or at least tolerated by the West German government in order to "get rid of three murderers, which had become a security burden" (as Amnon Rubinstein wrote in Israeli newspaper Haaretz under the headline "Bonn's Disgrace" shortly after the prisoner release).[20][21][22][23]

Aftermath

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Graves of five of the victims of the Munich Massacre at Kiryat Shaul Cemetery

Spitzer was buried alongside teammates Amitzur Shapira, Kehat Shorr, Eliezer Halfin, and Mark Slavin at Kiryat Shaul Cemetery in Tel Aviv, Israel.[24]

Widow of Andre Spitzer holds her daughter while lighting the torch during a memorial ceremony on Yud Alef Square (1974).

Despite having no family in Israel and knowing little Hebrew, Ankie Spitzer decided to remain in Israel with her daughter, and later converted to Judaism.[3] Ankie explained that she thought that if she returned to Amsterdam to raise her daughter, "I would never be able to explain to Anouk what her father was about. She would always be an exception there. Here, she would fit in".[25]

Ankie Spitzer confirmed that during Operation Wrath of God, a covert operation by Mossad (Israeli external intelligence), authorized by Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, to track down and kill the Black September and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) perpetrators and masterminds of the Munich massacre, Mossad officials regularly called her home to inform her whenever a target was killed.[26] Ankie said that she drew no satisfaction, and would have preferred for the terrorists to have been put on trial: "It didn't fill me with joy to think, 'Oh, great, now they're revenging Andre', because I never looked for that revenge. I don't live for revenge, I live for justice".[27]

In 1980, Ankie Spitzer married Elie Rekhess, a professor at Tel Aviv University, and is now known as Ankie Rekhess-Spitzer.[28] She led the fight to get the German government to admit their culpability in the failed rescue of Andre and the others. In 2003, after relatives of the killed Olympians brought a lawsuit against the German government charging the government with gross misconduct and gross mismanagement in its handling of the crisis, the Germans paid a financial settlement to the families of the Munich victims.[15][29][16] Today Ankie Spitzer is a correspondent in Israel covering the Middle East for Dutch and Belgian television.[3]

Ankie Spitzer for years has sought to have the International Olympic Committee designate a minute of silence at the Opening Ceremony of an Olympic Games for the 11 Olympians who had been killed in Munich, but her request had always been denied until the delayed 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.[30]

Andre Spitzer has been portrayed by Ori Pfeffer in Munich and Pasquale Aleardi in Munich 72: Das Attentat.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ ""40 de ani de la masacrul olimpic. Unul dintre israelienii ucişi la München în 1972 era timişorean" | adevarul.ro". 23 June 2012. Archived from the original on 4 July 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  2. ^ B. P. Robert Stephen Silverman. The 100 Greatest Jews in Sports: Ranked According to Achievement Archived 4 July 2022 at the Wayback Machine (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003)
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h ""I will never stop talking about it" | The Jewish Standard". Archived from the original on 3 July 2017. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  4. ^ "Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the ... Congress". 1996. Archived from the original on 4 July 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  5. ^ a b c d ""Remembering the Munich 11" | Arielle Yael Mokhtarzadeh | The Times of Israel". Archived from the original on 17 April 2016. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  6. ^ Taylor, Paul (2004). Jews and the Olympic Games: the clash between sport and politics: with a complete review of Jewish Olympic medalists – Paul Taylor. Sussex Academic Press. ISBN 9781903900888. Archived from the original on 4 July 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  7. ^ "Munich '72 and Beyond | Remembering the Victims of Munich ’72"[permanent dead link]
  8. ^ a b c ""After the Nightmare; In this SI Classic, three Israeli athletes describe the shattering effect the tragedy of Munich had on them"". Sports Illustrated Vault | Si.com. Archived from the original on 30 November 2018. Retrieved 5 June 2018.
  9. ^ a b c d e ""Ankie Spitzer's 40-year quest for Olympic justice" | The Times of Israel". The Times of Israel. Archived from the original on 11 August 2019. Retrieved 5 June 2018.
  10. ^ "The World: Israel's Dead Were the Country's Hope". TIME. 18 September 1972. Archived from the original on 30 September 2007. Retrieved 28 November 2016.
  11. ^ Congressional Record (PDF). Vol. 142. 1996. p. H8540. Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 February 2017.
  12. ^ Assoulen, Philippe (2009). Les champions juifs dans l'histoire: Des sportifs face à l'antisémitisme – Philippe Assoulen. Imago. ISBN 9782849520727. Archived from the original on 4 July 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  13. ^ ""Special report: Haunted by Munich – surviving the Olympics' darkest hour" | Jewish News". 5 September 2017. Archived from the original on 14 June 2018. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  14. ^ a b Benhorin, Yitzhak (December 2015). ""Horrific new details emerge in 1972 Munich Olympics massacre"". Ynetnews. Archived from the original on 3 July 2018. Retrieved 5 June 2018.
  15. ^ a b c Reeve, Simon (August 2011). One Day in September: The Full Story of the 1972 Munich Olympics Massacre and the Israeli Revenge Operation "Wrath of God" – Simon Reeve. Skyhorse Publishing. ISBN 9781611450354. Archived from the original on 9 February 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  16. ^ a b Sonneborn, Liz (15 December 2002). Murder at the 1972 Olympics in Munich – Liz Sonneborn. The Rosen Publishing Group. ISBN 9780823936540. Archived from the original on 9 February 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  17. ^ Marcovitz, Hal (2002). The Munich Olympics – Hal Marcovitz. Infobase. ISBN 9781438124865. Archived from the original on 4 July 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  18. ^ a b Kitaeff, Jack (17 March 2011). Handbook of Police Psychology. Routledge. ISBN 9781136861697. Archived from the original on 4 July 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  19. ^ Markus, Bob (19 July 2011). I'll Play These: A Sports Writer's Life – Bob Markus. Xlibris Corporation. ISBN 9781462869787. Archived from the original on 4 July 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  20. ^ Sattar, Majid (9 November 2006). "Folgen eines Anschlags" (in German). Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Archived from the original on 10 December 2011. Retrieved 16 October 2013.
  21. ^ "Olympics Massacre: Munich – The real story". The Independent. 22 January 2006. Archived from the original on 23 June 2008. Retrieved 16 October 2013.
  22. ^ Burke, Jason (26 March 2000). "Bonn 'faked' hijack to free killers". The Observer. Archived from the original on 11 August 2017. Retrieved 26 July 2013.
  23. ^ Greenfeter, Yael (4 November 2010). "Israel in shock as Munich killers freed". Haaretz. Archived from the original on 12 October 2017. Retrieved 10 October 2013.
  24. ^ Front Page Israel. Jerusalem Post. 1994. ISBN 9789653560277. Archived from the original on 9 February 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  25. ^ Myre, Greg (7 August 2004). "Olympics: A 32-year-old Wound Still Healing". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 7 February 2022. Retrieved 28 November 2016.
  26. ^ Bergman, Ronen (30 January 2018). Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel's Targeted Assassinations – Ronen Bergman. Random House Publishing. ISBN 9781400069712. Archived from the original on 9 February 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  27. ^ *Reeve, Simon (New York, 2001) One Day in September: the full story of the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre and Israeli revenge operation 'Wrath of God. (ISBN 1-55970-547-7)
  28. ^ Al Martinez (19 July 1996). "Never a Silent Moment". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 6 March 2016. Retrieved 28 November 2016.
  29. ^ Farrell, Courtney (January 2010). Terror at the Munich Olympics – Courtney Farrell. ABDO Publishing Company. ISBN 9781617851865. Archived from the original on 9 February 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
  30. ^ Thomas, Louisa (24 July 2021). "The Tokyo Olympics' Unquiet Moment of Silence". The New Yorker. Retrieved 24 July 2024.
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