San Charles Haddad - The File: Origins of the Munich Massacre

Advance Praise for
THE FILE

San Charles Haddads The File skillfully unearths some of the most deeply hidden roots of the horrendous Black September massacre that overshadowed the 1972 Munich Olympic Games. On the basis of awesomely extensive archival research, Haddad stages a historical drama of the formation of the Palestine Olympic Committee, in 1934, on the eve of Berlins Nazi Olympics, to which the POC was destined to send no team. It is, in fact, with a dramatists keen sense of character and action that Haddad delves into the work of a handful of dedicated idealistic organizers who struggled to bring together all the mutually antagonistic Palestinian sports organizations during the years of British Mandate rule. Among the most important of the many dramatis personae are the Zionist sports enthusiast Yosef Yekutieli and Jerusalems YMCA director Waldo Heinrichs. Their stories are told with loving detailagainst the dark backdrop of Palestinian Nazis determined to prevent any kind of cooperation between Jews and Arabs, on or off the fields of play. It is a shame that The File is not twice as long as its 368 pages.

Allen Guttmann , author of
The Olympics: A History of the Modern Games

A POST HILL PRESS BOOK

The File:

Origins of the Munich Massacre

2020 by San Charles Haddad

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 978-1-64293-026-9

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-64293-027-6

Cover art by Rob Rice

Interior design and composition by Greg Johnson, Textbook Perfect

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Post Hill Press

New York Nashville

posthillpress.com

Published in the United States of America

For Blair and Wesley

Dedication & Epigraph

To the memory of those who died at the Games of the XX Olympiad
in Munich, Germany, as a result of the events of 56 September 1972, and to those in Palestinian sport who emboldened me
to reconsider our divided past, and our shared future.

Israel Olympic Committee Delegation Members

Moshe Weinberg, Wrestling Coach (d. 1972)

Yossef Romano, Weightlifter (d. 1972)

Zeev Friedman, Weightlifter (d. 1972)

David Berger, Weightlifter (d. 1972)

Yakov Springer, Weightlifting Judge (d. 1972)

Eliezer Halfin, Wrestler (d. 1972)

Yossef Gutfreund, Wrestling Referee (d. 1972)

Kehat Shorr, Shooting Coach (d. 1972)

Mark Slavin, Wrestler (d. 1972)

Andre Spitzer, Fencing Coach (d. 1972)

Amitzur Shapira, Track Coach (d. 1972)

West German Police

Anton Fliegerbauer, German Police Officer (d. 1972)

Palestine Olympic Committee

Omar Hussein Shuweikeh, Secretary General,
Palestine Olympic Committee (d. 2007)

Khalil Hassan Jaber, Secretary General of Palestine
Amateur Athletics Federation (d. 2008)

Akram Daher, Head of International Affairs,
Palestine Olympic Committee (d. 2009)

Ecclesiastes 9:11-12

I have further observed under the sun that

The race is not won by the swift,

Nor the battle by the valiant;

Nor is bread won by the wise,

Nor wealth by the intelligent,

Nor favor by the learned.

For the time of mischance comes to all.

And a man cannot even know his time. As fishes are enmeshed in a fatal net, and as birds are trapped in a snare, so men are caught at the time of calamity, when it comes upon them without warning.

1 Corinthians 9:24-27

Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air. But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.

Surah al-Hadid 57:20

57:20 Know that the life of the world is only play, and idle talk, and pageantry, and boasting among you, and rivalry in respect of wealth and children; as the likeness of vegetation after rain, whereof the growth is pleasing to the husbandman, but afterward it drieth up and thou seest it turning yellow, then it becometh straw. And in the Hereafter there is grievous punishment, and (also) forgiveness from Allah and His good pleasure, whereas the life of the world is but matter of illusion.

Contents

Section of a sports map of Jerusalem published by the Jerusalem YMCA for and distributed at its Dedication event on April 18, 1933.

Source: University of Minnesota Libraries Department of Archives and Special Collections, Kautz Family YMCA Archives, Records of YMCA international work in Palestine and Israel. Reproduced with the permission of the Office of the General Counsel of the YMCA of the USA.

Sports will not make angels of brutes, but there is a great possibility that they will temper that brutality, giving the individual a bit of self control. That, at least, is something! So wrote Pierre de Coubertin, the spiritual founder of the modern Olympic Games, in early 1935.

But what if the brute were not an athlete?

Adolf Hitler, the fascist dictator of the New Germany, certainly was not the sporting type. He was more on the pathway to becoming a demon. Hitler did not waste time philosophizing the values of sport. While an ailing Coubertin (d. 1937) was writing commentary for a Belgian sport newspaper, Hitler was focused on bringing to fruition his aspirations for a new German empire. The creation of his Third Reich would bring about the deaths of tens of millions between September 1939 and May 1945.

Hitlers priorities were exhibited in some of the key strategic policy benchmarks that he achieved during the raging debate on whether to withdraw the Olympic hosting rights from Germany after the Nazis seized full control of the country on January 30, 1933. These benchmarks included: the Enabling Act (March 1933), which gave Hitler the right to pass laws without the approval of the German parliament; the Reichskonkordat (July 1933), in which the Vatican consented to the restriction of the German clergys political activity; the reintegration of the Saar region into the territory of Germany (January 1935); his massive rearmament campaign and reintroduction of conscription (March 1935); introduction of the anti-Semitic and racial Nuremberg Laws (September 1935); and the remilitarization of the Rhineland (March 1936) in violation of the Treaty of Versailles (which had formalized the end of the First World War). This is the national context in Germany in the lead-up to the Berlin Games that influenced the behaviors and decisions of this books protagonists and other characters.