Israeli and German fighter pilots conducted their first joint army training in Germany on Tuesday, in honour of those who suffered the Holocaust and the 11 Israelis killed at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
An education of fighter jets, adding the Israeli Air Force F-16s and Eurofighter aircraft of the German Luftwaffe, began commemorations with an overpass at Fuerstenfeldbruck Air Base near Munich to mark the Olympic massacre.
Then they made an aerial tribute on the old Nazi camp in Dachau.
Training is the culmination of two weeks of maneuvers that will allow the Israeli air force to exercise for the first time on German soil.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, this is the only educational project that the Israeli Air Force (IAF) is achieving this year.
In a statement, Luftwaffe leader Ingo Gerhartz, joint training “is a sign of our friendship today.”
He said it is also a reminder that Germany has a lasting duty “to combat anti-Semitism with the utmost coherence” because of its Nazi past.
– ‘Very touching’ –
The IAF said the mission, which will continue until August 28, will give its pilots the ability to exercise in an unfazed environment and feature simulated air combat, air-to-ground battles and missile threats.
Israeli pilots will also participate in air maneuvers with Germany and other NATO members in the deployment.
Germany and Israel have intensified the army’s cooperation in recent years, and the Luftwaffe conducted joint training in the Israeli Negev desert in 2019.
But Israel’s history for Germany is full of history.
Nine members of the 1972 Israeli Olympics were killed in a shootout in Munich after being taken hostage through Palestinian militants.
The gunmen had previously shot an Israeli coach and athlete in the Olympic Village.
They were killed “by an unusual enemy of Israel and Germany: terror,” an Israeli air force officer who asked to be known only as “Major T” told the AFP.
Then, German and Israeli aircraft overflew the Dachau site, which was built in 1933 and served as a style for other concentration camps.
More than 40,000 Jews died in World War II in Dachau.
The overpass will be followed by a wreath-laying rite in Dachau attended by IAF Commander Amikam Norkin and his German counterpart Gerhartz, as well as German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and Israel’s Ambassador to Germany Jeremy Issacharoff.
An Israeli officer, grandson of a Dachau survivor, will deliver a speech.
It will be “a very moving occasion for all,” said Major T, whose grandfather is a Holocaust survivor.
The tribute comes when Germany is facing an increase in anti-Semitic and far-right violence, years after the defeat of the Nazi regime.
In the eastern city of Halle last year, a neo-Nazi shot two other people after trying, but unsuccessfully, typhoon in a synagogue.
The attack led Chancellor Angela Merkel to say that Germany will have to “do more” to protect the Jewish people.
In June, Kramp-Karrenbauer ordered the partial dissolution of Germany’s elite KSK command after revealing that some of its members had neo-Nazi sympathies.