Dan Alon did not speak publicly about the Munich Olympics for 34 years. He was one of five athletes to escape the terrorist attacks and live to tell their stories, but he kept that to himself.

Alon didn’t want to tell his story until last year. After the release of the movie ‘Munich,’ Alon felt he had an opportunity to get his message out.

Still, it wasn’t easy the first time he spoke.

‘It was very hard for me to talk,’ Alon said. ‘I had to stop many times. My words were stuck in my throat.’

Friday and Saturday, Alon spoke again at the Chabad House at Syracuse University. He emphasized he is not a speaker from the beginning and said he would be telling his story, but not giving a speech.

At times, the soft-spoken Alon stopped, seemingly choked up by the emotion of the subject. He said there were more things he wanted to discuss, but he simply could not go into detail.

Ben Barnhart, a freshman computer art major, said Alon was able to convey his emotions effectively in the speech.

‘I’ve never heard a personal story like that before,’ Barnhart said.

Alon was in the hotel when the bullets started flying in the Olympic village. He was sleeping in the second room out of the five the Israelis shared. The gunmen entered the first room and opened fire.

The first shots woke Alon up, but he did not know exactly what was going on. The terrorists moved down the hall, skipping room number two. They would pass his entrance twice that night, but they never came in.

‘Why they didn’t come into number two in the beginning, nobody knows,’ he said.

Then the shooting started again. This time bullets flew into Alon’s room, coming out of the wall right behind his bed.

Alon and the other athlete raced to the balcony, where they saw a terrorist outside. He was wearing a white hat and was holding a machine gun in one hand and a hand grenade in the other. The terrorist yelled to the German police that they had killed two Israelis and were holding hostages and wanted to make demands to the Israeli government.

‘That’s when we knew we were in for some problems,’ Alon said.

Alon’s first thought was to fight back. He was a fencing athlete but he was staying with others who were in the shooting competition. They could try to kill the terrorists before they themselves were killed.

‘After a few minutes or more calculating the situation, we decided to escape because we didn’t know how many terrorists there were,’ he said. ‘It was too risky for us, and it was too risky for the hostages.’

Alon and the other athletes made a run for it. He was the second to go. The first athlete ran in a zig-zag motion to avoid the gunshots from the terrorists in the building, but Alon did not have to dodge bullets. When he looked back, the terrorist was staring at him, but he did not fire.

The surviving athletes were taken to a safe house by the German police. There, they waited as the hostages were loaded onto helicopters and taken to the airport. They waited as the word came across that the rescue attempt had been a success and everyone was alive.

‘We were very happy and we celebrated,’ Alon said. ‘We even opened a bottle of champagne.’

But the celebration ended when the truth came out that the hostages had all perished.

After the Olympics, Alon said he was filled with anger. Anger at the terrorists. Anger at the German police. Anger at the Israeli Olympic Committee for not providing more security.

Even with all this anger, he said he did not agree with the way the Israeli government tried to retaliate by assassinating people involved in planning the attack, as it was portrayed in the Hollywood film.

‘You killed those responsible, but you did not solve the problem,’ he said. ‘You can’t solve this problem through bloodshed. Bloodshed brings more bloodshed.’

Alon said this is the same problem the Israeli government deals with today in addressing terrorism in the state. He said he would prefer other forms of punishments instead of violent retaliation.

‘If you bomb them and shoot at them, that’s not going to bring a solution,’ he said. ‘I believe economic, political and social punishments are much stronger than bombing.’

Mike Mintz, a high school junior from Providence who was visiting Barnhart, said he agreed with Alon’s proposal for cutting back on violence.

‘I thought that was pretty good,’ Mintz said. ‘Because it’s true. It has a lot of sense to it.’

Published on April 28, 2007 at 12:00 pm