Israeli, German jets to make 1st joint flyover at Dachau, Munich Olympics site

BERLIN (JTA) — Israeli and German military planes will perform a joint flyover in Germany for the first time ever.

The Aug. 18 flight will pass over the site of the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics and skirt the edge of the city of Dachau, where the Nazis established their first concentration camp for political opponents in 1933.

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 on Thursday.

He called the planned event “a moving sign of our friendship today” and a sign of determination to “fight anti-Semitism with the utmost consistency.”

A member of the Palestinian terror group which seized members of the Israeli Olympic Team at their quarters at the Munich Olympic Village appears with a hood over his face on the balcony of the village building where the terrorists held several team members hostage, September 5, 1972. (Kurt Strumpf/AP)

The flyover comes in the midst of a historic two-week joint military exercise between Israel and Germany, dubbed Blue Wings 2020, which starts Monday. It will be the Israeli Air Force’s first joint exercise with the Luftwaffe in Germany. The German Air Force held joint exercises in Israel last fall.

The Aug. 18 flyover will take the pilots over the former Nazi airfield Furstenfeldbruck near Munich, which is where Palestinian terrorists shot dead nine Israeli athletes and coaches and one German police officer at the 1972 Summer Olympics. Two Israelis had been killed earlier.

The joint delegation will later attend a commemoration ceremony at the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial.