Spitzer returned to Munich about four hours before Palestinian members of Black September broke into the Israeli quarters , killed coach Moshe Weinberg and weightlifter Yossef Romano , and took Spitzer and 8 of his teammates hostage . The terrorists announced that they wanted 234 other terrorists freed . The terrorists beat the hostages , and castrated one of them leaving him to bleed to death in front of his bound fellow hostages . Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir called Spitzer 's wife , and told her the Israeli government " would not negotiate with terror . " Spitzer 's wife asked " why not ? " , and Meir responded " If we give in to their demands , no Jew will be safe anywhere in the world . " 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 . Spitzer was the only hostage who spoke German , so he was the go-between with the German crisis team . 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 . 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 . Instead , the Bavarian border patrol and Munich police attempted an ill-prepared ambush/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 . After a two-hour gunfight , Spitzer watched as four of his teammates were executed with machine guns , then incinerated when a grenade was detonated inside their helicopter . Seconds later , Spitzer and four more of his teammates were then fatally shot by the terrorists . Spitzer was 27 years old at the time . In all , 11 Israeli hostages were killed . Five of the terrorists and a West German police officer , Anton Fliegerbauer , 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 . 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 October 29 . 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 )
Lufthansa Flight 615
Lufthansa Flight 615
Andre Spitzer