The idea of progress in the modern sense implies that once man has reached a certain level, intellectual and moral or social, there exists a firm level of being below which he cannot sink. This contention, however, is empirically refuted by the incredible barbarization which we have been so unfortunate as to witness in our century.



So wrote Leo Strauss in the years after World War II. And the century had more horrors still to come. Thirty years ago today, a group of murderous thugs invaded the Olympic Village at Munich, twenty miles from the death camp at Dachau, and took hostage a group of 9 Israeli athletes and coaches after slaughtering two others.



The grim news that ended many hours of waiting and confusion and grief was announced by Jim McKay: "Tonight our worst fears have been realized. They're all gone."



Avery Brundage, president of the International Olympic Committee, an organization as morally obtuse then as now, decreed that the Games would continue.



Showtime will present "The 1972 Munich Olympic Games: Bud Greenspan Remembers" tonight at 10:00 and will repeat the show several times through the month. An earlier film on the cruel events, One Day in September, narrated by Michael Douglas, won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2000.



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Amended 9/6, with my thanks to William Sulik at Blithering Idiot for a reminder of the importance of remembering the dead individually. These are the members of the Israeli delegation who were slain on that grim September day.



Moshe Weinberg, Wrestling coach, 33

Joseph Romano, Weightlifter, 32

David Berger, Weightlifter, 26

Zeev Friedman, Weightlifter, 28

Yacob Springer, Weightlifting instructor, 51

Eliezer Halfin, Wrestler, 28

Mark Slavin, Wrestler, 18

Yosef Gutfreund, Wrestling Referee, 41

Andre Spitzer, Fencing coach, 45

Amitzur Shapira, Athletics coach, 32

Kehat Schorr, Marksmanship coach, 53.



Requiescat in pace.