German and Israeli Air Force jets today flew over the former Nazi concentration camp Dachau to honour those killed there in the Holocaust and to pay tribute to the 11 Israeli athletes murdered in the Munich massacre.
It is the first time ever that the Israeli Air Force has participated in such exercises in Germany. A total of around 180 Israeli personnel are involved.
In the historic exercise, two Israeli F-16s and two German Eurofighters escorted an Israeli Air Force Gulfstream G-550 carrying the commanders of both air forces over the camp memorial outside Munich, while a third Eurofighter filmed the formation from the sky.
More than 40,000 Jews were killed at Dachau during World War II.
They also flew over the nearby Fuerstenfeldbruck airfield to honour the 11 Israeli athletes killed in the Munich massacre attack during the 1972 Summer Olympics.
Two athletes were killed and another nine taken hostage by the Palestinian group Black September from the Olympic Village on 5th September 1972.
Operating out of a German air base in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, they will be conducting exercises with the German air force for the first week, and also planes from the Hungarian air force in the second week.
We will be “flying side by side with the Israeli Air Force for the first time in our history,” Ingo Gerhartz, Chief of the German Air Force, told the German press agency dpa last week. He called the planned event “a moving sign of our friendship today” and a sign of determination to “fight antisemitism with the utmost consistency”.
The flyover will be followed by a wreath-laying ceremony at Dachau to be attended by IAF commander Amikam Norkin and his German counterpart Gerhartz, as well as German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and the Israeli ambassador to Germany, Jeremy Issacharoff. An Israeli officer, the grandson of a Dachau survivor, will give a speech.
