14 Facts About Andre Spitzer

Andre Spitzer was one of 11 athletes and coaches taken hostage and subsequently killed by terrorists in the Munich massacre.

Andre Spitzer's parents survived the Holocaust in Nazi forced labor camps.

Andre Spitzer served in the Israeli Air Force and attended Israel's National Sport Academy, where he studied fencing.

Andre Spitzer returned to Israel with his wife soon afterward where, at age 27, he became the country's top fencing instructor.

Andre Spitzer helped found the National Fencing Academy, and became chief fencing instructor at the Wingate Institute.

Ankie Andre Spitzer recalled her husband's idealism and attitude towards the Olympics:.

Andre Spitzer missed his train, but his wife drove him at breakneck speed to the station in Eindhoven, where he boarded the train without a ticket.

Andre Spitzer was seen once during the hostage crisis, standing at a second-floor window in a white undershirt with his hands tied in front of him, talking to the German negotiators.

At one point, when Andre Spitzer tried to give the negotiators information that the terrorists did not want the negotiators to have about the killing and castration of fellow Israeli hostage Yossef Romano, one of the terrorists clubbed Andre Spitzer in the head with the butt of an AK-47 assault rifle and pulled him roughly away from the window, back into the room.

Andre Spitzer was buried alongside teammates Amitzur Shapira, Kehat Shorr, Eliezer Halfin, and Mark Slavin at Kiryat Shaul Cemetery in Tel Aviv, Israel.

In 1980, Ankie Andre Spitzer married Elie Rekhess, a professor at Tel Aviv University, and is known as Ankie Rekhess-Andre Spitzer.

Andre Spitzer led the fight to get the German government to admit their culpability in the failed rescue of Andre and the others.

Today Ankie Andre Spitzer is a correspondent in Israel covering the Middle East for Dutch and Belgian television.

Andre Spitzer has been portrayed by Ori Pfeffer in Munich and Pasquale Aleardi in Munich 72: Das Attentat.