Andre Spitzer
Andre Spitzer | |
---|---|
אנדרי שפיצר | |
Pronunciation | /andˈreː ˈʃpɪtsɐ/ |
Born | |
Died | 6 September 1972 Fürstenfeldbruck, Munich, West Germany | (aged 27)
Cause of death | Shooting |
Body discovered | Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base |
Resting place | Kiryat Shaul Cemetery Tel Aviv, Israel 32°07′45″N 34°49′25″E / 32.12917°N 34.82361°E |
Nationality | Israeli |
Citizenship | Romania, Israel |
Alma mater | Wingate Institute |
Occupation | Fencing coach |
Years active | 1964–1972 |
Known for | Killed by terrorists in the Munich massacre |
Height | 5 ft 10 in (178 cm) |
Spouse | Ankie Spitzer |
Children | Anouk 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
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
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
Spitzer returned to Munich about four hours before Palestinian members of
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
Spitzer was buried alongside teammates Amitzur Shapira, Kehat Shorr, Eliezer Halfin, and Mark Slavin at Kiryat Shaul Cemetery in Tel Aviv, Israel.[24]
Despite having no family in Israel and knowing little
Ankie Spitzer confirmed that during
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
Andre Spitzer has been portrayed by Ori Pfeffer in Munich and Pasquale Aleardi in Munich 72: Das Attentat.
See also
- List of select Jewish fencers
- One minute of silence
References
- ^ ""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.
- ^ 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)
- ^ a b c d e f g h i ""I will never stop talking about it" | The Jewish Standard". Archived from the original on 3 July 2017. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
- ^ "Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the ... Congress". 1996. Archived from the original on 4 July 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
- ^ 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.
- ISBN 9781903900888. Archivedfrom the original on 4 July 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
- ^ "Munich '72 and Beyond | Remembering the Victims of Munich ’72"[permanent dead link]
- ^ 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.
- ^ 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.
- ^ "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.
- ^ Congressional Record (PDF). Vol. 142. 1996. p. H8540. Archived from the original (PDF) on 18 February 2017.
- ISBN 9782849520727. Archivedfrom the original on 4 July 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
- ^ ""Special report: Haunted by Munich – surviving the Olympics' darkest hour" | Jewish News". Archived from the original on 14 June 2018. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
- ^ 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.
- ^ ISBN 9781611450354. Archivedfrom the original on 9 February 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
- ^ ISBN 9780823936540. Archivedfrom the original on 9 February 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
- ISBN 9781438124865. Archivedfrom the original on 4 July 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
- ^ ISBN 9781136861697. Archivedfrom the original on 4 July 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
- ISBN 9781462869787. Archivedfrom the original on 4 July 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
- ^ 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.
- ^ "Olympics Massacre: Munich – The real story". The Independent. 22 January 2006. Archived from the original on 23 June 2008. Retrieved 16 October 2013.
- ^ 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.
- ^ 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.
- ISBN 9789653560277. Archivedfrom the original on 9 February 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
- ^ 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.
- ISBN 9781400069712. Archivedfrom the original on 9 February 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2018.
- ISBN 1-55970-547-7)
- ^ Al Martinez (19 July 1996). "Never a Silent Moment". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on 6 March 2016. Retrieved 28 November 2016.
- ISBN 9781617851865. Archivedfrom the original on 9 February 2022. Retrieved 4 June 2018.