Forty-five years after the murderous PLO attack on Israeli Olympic team members at the 1972 games, a memorial dedicated to the victims has opened in Munich.

The memorial – largely realized through the persistent efforts of family members –features the biographies of the 11 Israeli athletes and coaches and a German police officer killed in the attack.

In his remarks at the opening ceremony on Sept. 6, Israeli President Reuven Rivlin addressed families of the victims, some of whom had flown in from Israel.

“[W]e march together with your children, your grandchildren, your relatives and your fellow Olympic delegation, all those who haven’t forgotten you for a moment,” Rivlin said, adding that he hoped a moment of silence would be introduced at future Olympic Games in their memory.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the monument was too long in coming.

“We owe it firstly to you, the relatives,” he said. “The Olympic village became a place of Palestinian terrorists, a stage for their boundless hatred for Israel.”

Instead, he said, the site is now a place of remembrance and healing.

“Only when Jews in Germany feel safe here, feel at home, only then has Germany become whole,” Steinmeier said.

Some 200,000 Jews, mostly from the former Soviet Union, are now living in Germany.