The Israeli Air Force will carry out a joint exercise with the Luftwaffe in Germany for the first time, including a visit to the Dachau concentration camp, the German military said Thursday.
The forces will also fly over the Fuerstenfeldbruck airbase to commemorate the 1972 attack on the Summer Olympics in Munich in which 11 Israeli athletes were killed.
“For the first time, the Israeli Air Force will fly to Germany on 17-28 August to carry out a joint exercise with the Luftwaffe,” the Bundeswehr said in a statement.
As part of the exercise dubbed “Blue Wings 2020”, a German-Israeli formation will fly over the Dachau concentration camp and lay a wreath to commemorate victims of the Holocaust, the statement said.
Eleven Israeli athletes were killed at the 1972 Munich Games after gunmen from the radical Palestinian Black September group broke into the Olympic village and took them hostage.
“It is a moving sign of our friendship today that we are flying side by side with the Israeli Air Force for the first time in our history,” Luftwaffe Inspector Lieutenant General Ingo Gerhartz said.
Because of the Holocaust, Germany has an incentive “to fight anti-Semitism with the utmost consistency,” he added.
The German Luftwaffe took part in joint exercises in 2019 in the Israeli Negev desert.
