A few days earlier, there had been an unexpected additional event in the futuristic Olympic Stadium.

It took the form of a memorial service for 11 members of the Israeli team who had died as a result of an attack during the Games by a Palestinian terrorist group. Anton Fliegerbauer, a 32-year-old German policeman, also lost his life.

To be in the city of Munich this week in the late summer sunshine, was to feel some sense of the emotion of that time.

Last Saturday and Sunday (September 3 and 4), the Olympic Park was full of young people making their way to the Superbloom music festival.

They arrived in much the same excited way that spectators did for the Olympic events all those years ago.

The memorial events witnessed at the start of the week underlined that for all the noble intentions of "joyous Games", Munich 1972 will be remembered above all for what International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach described as "the darkest day in Olympic history."

The attack had begun when terrorists from the Black September group infiltrated the Olympic Village and made their way to the block at 31 Connollystraße which housed the Israeli team.

That they were able to do so was because a map was made available which showed where each team was quartered.

To this day a similar map showing the location of each team is still displayed in the precincts of the Olympic Village.

Two died in the initial attack and then after a tense siege, the remaining members of the team were taken as hostages to the Fürstenfeldbruck air field by helicopter. 

In the firefight which followed, the remaining Israeli athletes died, along with a Munich policeman after a rescue operation which was badly flawed.

This was only revealed many hours after a mistaken announcement that it had been successful.

The following morning, now amid intense security, competitors including athletes from the Israeli team filed slowly into the Olympic Stadium for a service of remembrance.

The congregation included American legend Jesse Owens, who had won four gold medals at the 1936 Games in Berlin. 

He had once described the Olympic Games as a place to "break bread with the world".

The Munich Symphony Orchestra played the solemn funeral march from Ludwig van Beethoven’s Eroica symphony.

"Even in the world of crime there are still taboos, a final boundary of brutality, that makes people shrink back," Munich 1972 Olympic Organising Committee President Willi Daume said.

"The Olympic Games stand still, the flags in the stadium at half mast, the citizens of Munich, the thousands of competitors and officials bewildered and appalled," BBC television commentator David Coleman said as he began his television commentary on the service.

"Such is the confusion in this city, there are so many conflicting reports that many people in this stadium still don't know who died and why."

When the octogenarian IOC President Avery Brundage rose to speak, he angered many by comparing the attack with a political dispute before the Games over whether Rhodesia should be allowed to participate.

"I am convinced that world opinion agrees with me that we cannot allow a handful of terrorists to destroy this core of international cooperation and good will which the Olympic Games represent. The Games must go on!" Brundage declared.

"We must proceed with our efforts to keep them pure and praiseworthy, and to carry the sportsmanlike conduct of the athletes into other spheres.”

A few days later, the Closing Ceremony was a more sombre event than planned as organisers "cancelled those programme points which were to give the concluding celebration a joyous and colourful touch".

A giant symbolic rainbow, created by the German designer Otto Piene, was illuminated by spotlights above the stadium.

Although Brundage was accused of being out of touch, he may have been closer to the pulse than many realised.

There were some who felt that the Games were resumed with unseemly haste, but in the years that followed, many in positions of authority seemed all too ready to forget and there was, until recently, an unwillingness to remember the attack with a specific act at the Olympic Games themselves.

"Fifty years later, far too many questions remain unanswered," German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said this week at a commemoration event at Fürstenfeldbruck, close to where the tragic events had reached their climax half a century ago.

"The attack was followed by years of callousness, blocking the attack out by silence, that is also failing," Steinmeier admitted.

He stood alongside his Israeli counterpart Yitzhak Herzog at an emotional service of music and words of remembrance.

Secret archive papers relating to the event are now at last to be opened, and a joint group from Germany and Israel is soon to begin an investigation.

"I welcome the proposal to commission experts from both countries, their work may well bring uncomfortable truths," Steinmeier added.

IOC President Thomas Bach, himself a German, pledged to help.

"Much has remained in the dark during this time, we must not allow this darkness to be followed by amnesia and indifference," Bach insisted. "We welcome the fact that an independent commission is to shed full light on the darkness surrounding the actions of state agencies. If we can in any way contribute to this clarification with information, we shall do so."

Relatives of those who died had travelled to Munich for this week's commemorative events.

They were joined by sprint hurdler Esther Roth-Shahamorov and race walker Shaul Ladany who had both competed for Israel at the Munich Games.

In 1972, the names of those who perished were recited by Israeli Chef de Mission Shmuel Lalkin.

This week, they were spoken again by four teenagers drawn from the international congregation at the Olympiakirche at the Olympic Village.

"I thought we needed a different moment involving young people," church pastor Berndt Goetz told insidethegames.

The tragedy had happened long before any of the quartet had been born, so this helped invest the moment with a greater resonance.

There had been music from Israeli singer Roni Dalumi, accompanied by the Jewish Chamber Orchestra of Munich and a performance of the Andante from Felix Mendelssohn's Symphony No.12 for strings.

Amnon Seelig, cantor of the Jewish community in Mannheim, sang a traditional Jewish prayer.

Anke Spitzer, widow of Andrei, a fencing coach at the 1972 Games, has acted as a spokeswoman for the group of victims' families in sometimes difficult negotiations over matters of compensation.

Her words were a fitting way to bring to an end an emotional act of commemoration.

"I will never stop talking about it, so that it will never ever happen again and those who are responsible for it will pay the price," she said.