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Most people probably have Connollystrasse 31 permanently etched in their memories as the location where Palestinian terrorists kidnaped Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympic Games in 1972. But it is her home for Mechthild Foerster. She and her husband had no idea the apartment they had found in 1986 would be in the same building as the atrocity. “We understood quite shortly after,” she tells AFP, alluding to the memorial plate outside the building that honors the 11 Israeli delegation members who died fifty years ago. The plate is in German and Hebrew.
“It’s not like I felt like I was moving into a castle that was haunted. Life carries on, and injuries need to mend.”
On September 5, 1972, militant Palestinians from the “Black September” gang broke into the accommodations for the Israeli Olympic delegation, shot two people, and then kidnapped nine more.
Following a botched rescue attempt by West German police, all nine hostages, five of the eight hostage-takers, and a police officer were shot and killed.
“Plants all over.”
Little more than a year after the Games, the Olympic village was converted into residences for the inhabitants, notwithstanding the atrocities that took place there.
Having visited her sister-in-law, who moved into the Olympic village in 1973, Foerster, 85, was already familiar with living there.
The 80-hectare Olympic park’s neighboring 40-hectare (99-acre) residential section is now a vibrant neighborhood beloved by families and retirees.
The Max Planck Institute now houses visiting researchers in the apartments in the block that the Israeli delegation once called home. Long-term inhabitants like Foerster live in some others.
The first few years at the village, according to Foerster, “were really hot inside because it was basically just a pile of concrete, a sort of mountain that warms up in the summer.”
“Without plants, it would actually be impossible to live here. It’s now really pleasant “She replies, having just ridden her bike back from the store.
Potted plants, ivy, and miniature trees sit on every sun-facing balcony of the apartment building, adding some summertime freshness.
Ramps were constructed to make the structures more accessible to those with disabilities not long after the tragic Games in 1972.
There are no automobiles and no noisy traffic because all the roads are underground, so parents can let their kids play in the street without worrying.
