Remembering the Munich Massacre

frustrated more often than not: the

need to find out just what went down. We may

never know beyond a doubt, for example, if

Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, but as far as

learning exactly what transpired during the

tragic kidnapping and deaths of 11 Israeli

athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, an

unnerving, highly dramatic documentary

called "One Day in September" lets us in on

all the secrets.

When "One Day" defeated the much-loved

"Buena Vista Social Club" to take last year's

best documentary Oscar, those who hadn't

seen it suspected it had won because of its

worthy subject matter alone. Nothing could be

less true. As directed by Kevin Macdonald,

this utterly compelling behind-the-scenes

account of that horrific event unfolds with a

potent sense of authority and authenticity. This

is a story that can't help but involve us, one we

can't turn away from even for a moment.

For one thing, the chain of events it exposes

is almost beyond believing, a roller-coaster

saga not lacking for heroes, villains,

incompetents and dupes, a narrative balancing

International Olympic Committee hubris,

Israeli bitterness, Palestinian pride and

boggling German ineptitude and malfeasance.

Macdonald and his team have done a

remarkable job not just amassing a thorough

collection of significant archival footage, but

they've also gotten almost everyone critical to

the situation to speak on the record--some for

the first time--about how that particular

nightmare evolved.

We hear from German officials, including

military men and Hans-Dietrich Genscher,

then the German minister of the Interior. We

hear from the only member of a key Munich

police squad ever to talk: While his colleagues

were all threatened with loss of pensions if

they spoke up, he had none to lose. There are

international journalists who witnessed what

happened and, from the Israeli side, everyone

from wives and children of the murdered

athletes to Zvi Zamir, the former chief of

Mossad, the super-secret Israeli intelligence

organization who required, according to the

press notes, "six months of persuasion and

arm-twisting" before he agreed to talk.

Yet if there is one person whose testimony

is critical to this film's success, it is Jamal al

Gashey, the only member of the Palestinian

Black September terrorist squad still alive.

Getting him to speak on camera for the first

time apparently took a considerable amount of

determination, fortitude and luck, but the film

wouldn't have the authenticity and balance it

has without his story.

When Al Gashey talks about how "the

Palestinian revolution" empowered him after a

young life spent in squalid refugee camps,

when he talks about feeling "very proud that

for the first time I was able to confront the

Israelis," we hear an early version of a Middle

East dynamic of reciprocal violence that

continues to be played out to this very day.

"One Day in September" starts with a

German travelogue that presents Munich as it

wanted to be seen in 1972, "a kind of German

paradise... where tradition and modernity exist

happily side by side."

Unspoken in this is Munich's place as one

of the birthplaces of Nazism, or international

memories of the last German Olympics, the

Nazi-controlled 1936 Berlin event. But those

events were very much factors in Germany's

decision to counter a militaristic image by

having light security in the Olympic village.

For the eight Palestinians disguised as

athletes and helped over the village fence by

inebriated Americans sneaking in after

curfew, the Olympics provided a perfect world

stage to publicize their views. The aim of the

terror squad, a naive one considering Israel's

historic absolute refusal to bargain, was to

hold Israeli athletes hostage and trade them

for 200 political prisoners.

Making extensive use of contemporary

footage and sportscaster Jim McKay's voiceover

on ABC television (which holds up

remarkably well), "One Day in September"

shows how the siege inside the Olympic

village played out, and gives early signs of

German feebleness in the transparent ruses

they used to attempt to sneak into the building

where the athletes were held hostage.

The last third of the film concentrates, with

the help of computer-generated re-creations

(as well as graphic and bloody photographs)

on what happened when the Palestinians and

their hostages moved to a Munich airport. It

reveals a level of almost criminal German

naivete and incompetence that seems

especially striking given the way that, as one

journalist put it, "everyone was transfixed by

a myth of utter German ruthless efficiency."

When Israeli Mossad chief Zamir throws up

his hands in bitter frustration and says

"unbelievable," it's impossible not to agree.