Fifty years after what has been described as the "darkest day in Olympic history", the German government has agreed to pay the families of 11 murdered Israeli athletes more than $40 million in compensation.
The German government will also hold an inquiry that might finally expose all the facts surrounding what has become known as the Munich massacre.
The long shadow of Nazism that hung over what was then known as West Germany was supposed to be banished by the 1972 Munich Olympics, 36 years after the Berlin Games had been hijacked for the worst kind of propaganda.
A stone's throw from the Munich Olympic Village was Dachau concentration camp, where 32,000 prisoners suffered a slow death — many of them Jewish — before the camp was liberated by US forces in 1945.
Australian Olympians competing at the 1972 Munich Games had asked for directions to visit the camp — since turned into a memorial — but locals were reluctant to point anyone in the direction of a site of their country's past atrocities.
West Germans were keen to rid themselves of their wartime image.
Low-key security
Olympic organisers decided against outward displays of overt security, a decision that carried tragic consequences.
Volunteers were in charge of security at the Olympic Village, leaving it exposed as an easy target for the eight armed and hooded members of a Palestinian militant group known as Black September.
Two Israelis were killed inside the village, while nine others were taken hostage and transported to Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base, where an ambush by West German authorities was planned.
The bungled rescue attempt on the tarmac led to all nine Israelis being killed, as well as a West German policeman and five of the terrorists.
Blame was levelled against the ill-prepared and panicked West Germans, who allegedly refused to let the more experienced Israeli intelligence service take control of the mission.
This was an accusation denied by West German officials.
This week — 50 years to the day since the attack on the Israeli team — German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier led a memorial in Munich and at Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base, just metres from where the tragedy took place.
Mr Steinmeier promised remaining questions would be answered, while speaking of an open investigation to be conducted jointly by Germany and Israel.
A spokesperson for the families of the Israeli team members — who have spent the past five decades fighting for justice — read a letter to her dead husband that spoke of "Jewish blood" that was left on German soil.
Andre Spitzer was the Israeli fencing coach. He lost his life on the airstrip.
'I was here too'
His wife, Ankie — left widowed with a three-month-old daughter — was the last to speak at the memorial following a long line of public officials.
"Fifty years ago, I was here too," she said.
"A few hours after the massacre I stood in your room and couldn't believe how much hatred had been in that room; [there was] blood in the whole room, even on the ceiling.
"And I thought to myself, 'Is this where you spent the last hours of your life?'.
"I will never stop talking about it, so that will never ever happen again and that those who were responsible for it will pay the price."
Ankie Spitzer spoke of the decades-long struggle to get to this point, which included a last-minute agreement for compensation.
Family members of the victims had threatened to boycott the memorial service after negotiations broke down a week ago.
"You would think that mighty Germany would have done everything in its power not to add Jewish blood to its already bloodied soil," Ankie Spitzer told the gathering.
"Everybody is asking now if I finally feel closure. They don't understand that there will never be closure. The hole in my heart will never ever heal."
IOC not involved in paying compensation
The German government is paying the lion's share of the compensation, while the state of Bavaria and the city of Munich will also contribute.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is not contributing financially, although in his speech at the memorial IOC President Thomas Bach committed to helping the promised investigation "as far as possible".
"September 5 1972 was the darkest day in Olympic history. What began so peacefully and joyfully ended in inconceivable suffering," Bach said.
"We share the pain of the relatives of the 11 Israeli victims and the German policeman. To this day, that barbaric attack fills us with horror, shame and disgust.
"This attack was also an attack on the Olympic Games and the Olympic values.
"We welcome the establishment of an independent commission to shed full light onto the darkness surrounding state action.
"If, in so far as possible we can contribute to this examination, we will do that."
Mr Steinmeier said the sincerity of the remembrance ceremony would be tested by whether "we are prepared to recognise painful facts".
He said the events of 1972 were a story of "misjudgements and of dreadful, fateful mistakes of failure".
"Far too many questions remain unanswered," said Mr Steinmeier, who also highlighted why the Games resumed on the very day a memorial service was held.
"The Games must go on, they said, and the politicians too did all they could to get back to business as usual."
Mr Steinmeier described the failures as "the silence, the blocking out, the forgetting".
He pointed to the work that now lay ahead for an Israeli-German commission of historians to investigate the many questions that remain unanswered.
'Too many mistakes'
The National Library of Australia's archives contain an interview with a National Olympic Committee executive board member at the time of the Games.
David McKenzie — who became an IOC member before his death in 1981 — saw events unfold in Munich from his balcony that overlooked the Israeli team rooms.
"I was able to watch it closely and in very, very real detail … how they were taken out and the like," McKenzie recalled in the interview recorded by Neil Bennetts in 1975.
"I don't suggest in any one moment that the situation was not serious and tragic, but the reaction of the Germans was totally too dramatic, with too many troops involved, too many Bren gun carriers and too many tanks involved.
"What on earth they proposed to do … still remains a mystery. There were too many helicopters involved and too many mistakes made.
"For instance, the sharp shooters that were supposed to kill the [Palestinians] … were too few in number [and] issued with rifles to be used in the evening without infrared scopes on them and generally it wasn't handled well at all.
"I understand, although I can't vouch for it, that requests by the Israeli government to handle the whole thing with their special knowledge and experience in terrorism were rejected, as were requests from the US to assist.
"I thought the Germans reacted in an almost hysterical way … I personally feel they must take some of the blame for what actually occurred."
As events unfolded in 1972, the IOC was told late in the night that all the Israelis had been rescued.
But that was a lie which was shattered when Olympic officials woke the next morning and read the headlines.
Television coverage in the Olympic Village had also been suspended, keeping athletes in the dark.
Olympics 'must go on'
Australian basketballer Perry Crosswhite — who was competing in the first of three Olympic Games — still clearly remembers events in Munich.
"We heard what we thought were firecrackers going off in the village," Crosswhite told The Ticket.
"We weren't that far from where the Israeli accommodation was.
"All of a sudden, we were told we couldn't leave the village, or we couldn't get back into the village after we played.
"Then we were told there'd been a terrorist incident. The only information we got was from the television and then they decided to cut out the television because they didn't want the terrorists to see [the coverage].
"And then we were told, like everyone else, that the Israeli athletes and coaches had been saved, and then of course we got the real news later on … [how] that didn't happen."
Australia played West Germany in the men's basketball competition the day after the massacre.
"It was a bit emotional because the West German players were very upset with what had happened," Crosswhite said.
"I was surprised at the time that the IOC said the Games must go on.
"I guess I look at those Games and say, 'Well, what is true, what's not true?'.
"Certainly, it's true what happened to the Israeli athletes and coaches in the terrorist attack but [what about] how they got in, what the authorities did, what they did wrong."
The Munich massacre may have happened 50 years ago, but those who lost their brothers, husbands and fathers at the hands of the Black September group still feel what has been described as the "pain of indifference", as government and Olympic officials hastily moved on from the tragedy.
That haste, ironically, has delayed the inevitable.
Those seeking justice fight on. They will not rest until the truth has been told.
