My Connections to the New Movie SEPTEMBER 5

The movie SEPTEMBER 5 is a brilliant portrayal of the ABC sportscasters on the scene on September 5, 1972, who had to improvise news coverage of the Munich massacre at the Olympic Games. I discuss my personal connections including having tickets to the 1972 Olympics. Check out https://www.britannica.com/event/Muni… for more historical information.

The following is not a transcript of the podcast. Rather it consists of notes that I prepared for the podcast:

The new movie SEPTEMBER 5 is a brilliant portrayal of the ABC sportscasters on the scene on September 5, 1972, who had to improvise news coverage of the Munich massacre at the Olympic Games. Writer/director Tim Fehlbaum went to extraordinary lengths to ensure the accuracy of the portrayal of the ABC team.

One of the many shocking moments in the film is the realization by the ABC sportscasters that the nearly 1 billon people around the world watching the live coverage included the Black September terrorists watching on the TVs in the rooms of the Israeli hostages.

The Munich Games marked the first return of the Olympics to a German city since the 1936 Games in Berlin under Nazi Germany. The West German invitation had been extended, in part at least, to contrast with the 1936 Games.

My husband Mitch and I had tickets to those games …

We were stationed in Munich with the U.S. Army from September 1970. All officers in his category with a three-year active duty army commitment were reduced back to two years as President Nixon needed to declare the war in Vietnam over in order to be re-elected. Mitch and I returned to the U.S. in May 1972.

While stationed in Munich, Mitch and I had visited the Munich Olympics Games during construction and we had visited the 1936 Olympic Stadium during a visit from Munich to Berlin.  This massacre was very personal to us on so many levels, including that we had visited Israel for the first time on our honeymoon in September 1969.  Then in June 1971 we had flown from Munich to Israel to meet members of my family. It had felt surreal to have the plane on the Munich tarmac guarded by German police with automatic rifles.

As SEPTEMBER 5 is a film focused on the live media coverage of the unfolding events, explanations including as to how some of the Israel team managed to escape were not included. The answer to this and other questions can be found in an Encyclopedia Britannica article — https://www.britannica.com/event/Munich-Massacre/German-and-Israeli-responses

I encourage everyone to see this film. And may the current Israeli hostages also held by Palestinian terrorists be brought home safely very soon.