German president asks 1972 Olympics victims' families for forgiveness

Fifty years after a kidnapping during the 1972 Munich Olympics ended in bloodshed, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier asked the victims' families for forgiveness.

"I ask you, as the head of state of this country and on behalf of the Federal Republic of Germany, for your forgiveness for the lack of protection for the Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich and for the lack of information afterwards; and for the fact that what happened could happen," Steinmeier said on Monday at a commemoration event in Fürstenfeldbruck near Munich.

German and Israeli officials as well as bereaved families are paying tribute to the victims of the events.

Eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team as well as five of their Palestinian kidnappers and a German policeman were killed after a botched operation by German police to free the hostages on September 5, 1972.

After hours of negotiations, the kidnappers and their hostages had been taken in helicopters from the Olympic village to Fürstenfeldbruck air base in the southern state of Bavaria so they could be flown out on a passenger plane.

As they disembarked, they were fired upon by German security forces. The goal of the kidnappers had been to secure the release of 230 Palestinians in Israeli custody.

Steinmeier thanked the victims' relatives and Israeli President Isaac Herzog for attending the memorial event. "Without all of you, without the relatives and without the presence of the state of Israel, I could not have imagined a dignified commemoration," the German president asserted.

Steinmeier also noted that after the violent events in Munich in 1972, mistakes had been made: "The attack was followed by years and decades of silence and suppression."

Many questions remain unanswered to this day, such as why the surviving perpetrators were deported so quickly and what connections they had to German extremists.

Steinmeier said it is good that the German federal government is now proposing the establishment of an Israeli-German commission of historians "in order to shed more light on this dark chapter."

After decades of wrangling, the relatives of the Israeli victims had reached an agreement on compensation with the German government at the end of last week, only a few days before Monday's commemorations.