THE frightening image of a balaclava-clad Palestinian terrorist on the balcony at the 1972 Munich Olympic Games will live on in infamy.

The few images captured of the hostage situation were beamed around the world and conveyed a story of unprecedented evil. But what exactly happened in the room where 11 Israeli athletes were taken hostage has, until now, been largely shrouded in confusion and mystery.

Forty-three years after the horrific incident, the victim’s family members have spoken about their fight to uncover the facts of the massacre and decided to publicly share the grisly details.

‘THEY CAME TO KILL’

The attack was carried out by a wing of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation called Black September which primarily orchestrated the siege in order to call for the release of 234 prisoners jailed in Israel.

Before sunrise on September 5, eight men carrying duffel bags containing assault rifles, pistols and grenades scaled the fence into the athlete’s village and stormed the building were the Israelis slept.

In the following 20 hours a slow-motion nightmare unfolded for the German authorities that ended in a bungled rescue attempt as the world watched on in horror.

For the first time, gruesome details revealing the treatment of the Israeli athletes including the fact they were brutalised and even castrated, has come to light.

Wife of slain Israeli Olympian reveals grisly details of 1972 Munich attack Ilana Romano, the wife of slain Islraeli weightlifter Yossef Romano, reveals the grisly details of what happened to her husband during the attack by Palestinian gunmen at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Vision courtesy: AP

Speaking to The New York Times, the widow of Israeli weightlifter Yossef Romano told of the cruel fate that befell her husband inside that room.

“What they did is that they cut off his genitals through his underwear and abused him,” Ilana Romano said.

“Can you imagine the nine others sitting around tied up?” she said. “They watched this.”

The family members only began to learn of such details in 1992 after a long fight with the German government. They spoke out in an effort to get their loved ones the official recognition they believe they deserve.

Yossef Romano was shot early on in the siege as he tried to overpower the attackers and was left to bleed out before being castrated, his widow said.

Other hostages were beaten severely by their captors with a number of them suffering broken bones. A second member of the Israeli hostages was killed by the terror group in the residence while the other nine lost their lives during a botched ambush attempt at a nearby NATO air base from which the attackers had tried to negotiate their escape.

“They said it was only because of the botched-up rescue operation at the airport that they killed the rest of the hostages, but it’s not true,” Ankie Spitzer told the Times. Her husband, Andre, was a fencing coach at the Games and among those taken hostage.

“They came to hurt people. They came to kill,” she said.

It was two decades after the attack until German authorities admitted the existence of photos and documents that detailed the shocking brutality of the siege.

“The moment I saw the photos, it was very painful,” Ms Romano said.

“I remembered until that day Yossef as a young man with a big smile. I remembered his dimples, until that moment ... at that moment, it erased the entire Yossi that I knew.”

ACCUSATIONS OF A COVER UP

The victim’s family members only became privy to the documents out of a sheer stroke of luck.

Ms Spitzer went on German television in 1992 and lamented the little information provided to her about the final moments of her husband’s life.

“We asked for more details, but we were told, over and over, there was nothing,” Ms Spitzer said.

Following the appearance she received a call from a man who claimed to work for a German government agency with access to reports of the attack. The anonymous man sent her pages of police reports which she was able to use to strongarm the German government into admitting the existence of more, and eventually giving them up.

Confusion and uncertainty has always surrounded the details of the chaotic event. In the immediate wake of the tragedy, much of the focus and attention was on the failing of the German security officials in preventing and dealing with the attack.

The bodies of the victims were identified by family or friends in Munich following the attack but they were only shown pictures of their faces.

Adding to the mystery, as per Jewish custom, the bodies of the athletes were buried almost immediately following their return to Israel.

Accusations and theories of a 40-year cover up have continually dogged the German authorities in their handling of the incident.

In 2012, German magazine Der Spiegelpublished a cover story in which they claimed the country’s intelligence officials received a tip-off three weeks prior to the Olympic Games that the Palestinian group were planning an attack. According to the article, in the wake of the attack the German Foreign Ministry privately enforced a decree among German officials that “mutual incriminations must be avoided” and there must be “no self criticism”.

The German authorities never officially commented on the reported tip-off.

In the lead up to the global sporting event, Germany was also seen to be keen to avoid appearing to be outwardly militaristic after the previous Olympic Games held in the country were used by Adolf Hitler to further his political agenda. But their concern over wanting to portray a softer image drew intense criticism from those who saw it as a reason behind the less-than-adequate security at the event.

But it wasn’t the end of Germany’s poor luck.

Five of the Palestinian attackers died in the shootout at the air base, while the remaining three were captured by German police and taken into custody.

They were being held in a Munich prison awaiting trial when on October 29, Lufthansa Flight 615 was hijacked and threatened to be blown up if the Munich attackers were not released. The three remaining gunmen were immediately released by West Germany and received a whirlwind welcome mixed with praise and condemnation when they returned home to Libya.