Dan Alon

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Memorial to the victims in the Munich Olympic Park

Dan Alon (born March 28, 1945 under the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine ; died January 31, 2018 ) was an Israeli engineer and foil fencer .

Life

At the age of twelve Alon won a fencing championship in his age group for the first time, at 16 he became Israeli youth champion. In 1965 and 1969 he took part in the Maccabiah , the international Jewish sports event. Between 1968 and 1973 he was an Israeli master.

At the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich , he was an Israeli Olympic participant in foil singles. He survived the first round and was eliminated in the second round.

On the morning of September 5, 1972, he narrowly avoided being taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists . He was housed with another fencer and two marksmen in the Olympic Village in apartment 2 at Connollystrasse 31. Eleven athletes from apartment 1 and 3 were taken hostage, two athletes were murdered immediately. Alon and his three comrades had discarded the possibility of attacking the terrorists with the sporting rifles because they did not know how many there were and because they feared that more colleagues would be shot immediately. They therefore fled the building. During the liberation operation on the evening of September 5, the other nine comrades were also killed. Alon had to pack the belongings of his comrades killed and left with the surviving members of the Israeli Olympic team. The Olympic Games continued after a day's break. Alon thought the sequel was the right decision.

Alon had been drafted as a simple soldier in the Six Day War in 1967 and was also used in the 1973 Yom Kippur War . He worked as an engineer and director of a plastics processing company. The fear of further attacks has followed him throughout his life on business trips abroad. Since the production of the film Munich by Steven Spielberg in 2005, he has been repeatedly asked about his experiences, but did not want to stand in the foreground in comparison to the relatives of the victims. It was only after thirty years that he felt able to speak about what was happening in public. It was not until 2012 that he and Carla Stockton summarized his memories in the memoir "Munich memoir: Dan Alon's untold story of survival".

Alon was married and had three grown children, of whom the son Arik also practices fencing. He died in late January 2018 aged 72 years the consequences of cancer .

See also

literature

  • Simon Reeve: One Day in September: the full story of the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre and Israeli revenge operation 'Wrath of God' . New York 2000, ISBN 1-55970-547-7

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fencer who survived 1972 Munich massacre passes away. In: The Times of Israel. February 1, 2018, accessed February 1, 2018 .
  2. ↑ a b c Felix Rettberg: Interview: He escaped the terrorists: The Israeli fencer Dan Alon , evening newspaper , August 7, 2012
  3. ↑ a b Chanan Tigay: Munich survivor Dan Alon carries scars of '72 Olympics. Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, August 4, 2008, accessed June 11, 2018 .
  4. ^ Dan Alton, Carla Stockton: Munich memoir: Dan Alon's untold story of survival. Milton Keynes: Daptd.com, 2012. ISBN 978-0-9856436-0-7
personal data
SURNAME Alon, Dan
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli engineer and foil fencer
DATE OF BIRTH March 28, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH League of Nations mandate for Palestine
DATE OF DEATH January 31, 2018