Important visit to the concentration camp memorial: Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the Israeli ambassador and high-ranking military representatives from Germany and Israel are coming on August 18. to a joint military exercise.
- Important visit to the concentration camp memorial.
- Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the Israeli ambassador and high-ranking military representatives from Germany and Israel will come on August 18th. to Dachau.
- The reason is a joint military exercise.
Dachau - At the end of April there was a special date in the Dachau concentration camp memorial: the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the former concentration camp by soldiers of the US Army was to be celebrated. As reported, the celebration only had to take place in a very simple framework due to the corona: Instead of a gala dinner and guests of honor from all over the world, there was a wreath-laying ceremony in the smallest of groups, as well as online concerts and written greetings.
Another special event in the concentration camp memorial will now take place on Tuesday, August 18, at 4 p.m. The framework will also be small - the safety precautions for it all the greater.
AKK comes to Dachau
Organized by the German Air Force, Federal Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (CDU) will come to Dachau with the Ambassador of the State of Israel to Germany, Jeremy Issacharoff. The two are accompanied by Lieutenant General Ingo Gerhartz, the inspector of the German Air Force, and his Israeli counterpart, Major General Amikam Norkin. From the local officials, Lord Mayor Florian Hartmann will be there as well as concentration camp memorial director Gabriele Hammermann. The state government is represented by Minister of State Florian Herrmann (CSU). Other guests of honor: the Israeli Consul General Sandra Simovich and Charlotte Knobloch, President of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Munich and Upper Bavaria.
The event is part of a two-week joint military exercise by the German and Israeli air forces. In a corresponding press release by the German Armed Forces, it is stated that “for the first time the Israeli Air Force will be relocating combat aircraft to Germany from August 17 to 28 to practice together with the Air Force”. The Bundeswehr therefore speaks of a "historic moment". This exercise, confirmed Lieutenant Colonel Matthias Boehnke from the Air Force Press and Information Center in Berlin on request, takes place all over Germany, "from north to south".
Delegation wants to remember the victims of the Holocaust
Next Tuesday, the defense minister will fly with the ambassador and the air force generals from the Nörvenich air base in North Rhine-Westphalia towards Lechfeld air base in the Augsburg district. On the way there, it also goes via Fürstenfeldbruck, where a German-Israeli formation will fly over the air base in September 1972 in memory of the failed liberation of the Israeli athletes who were taken hostage during the Olympic Games in Munich.
The high-ranking delegation then drives from Lechfeld by car to Dachau, where the dignitaries visit the concentration camp memorial and, according to the Bundeswehr, “commemorate the victims of the Holocaust and the National Socialist tyranny”.
The public is not allowed to attend the appointment
The public will not be able to attend the event. According to Boehnke, the strictest security regulations apply. The media are also not allowed.
The joint exercise was brought about by Lieutenant General Gerhartz, who had issued a corresponding invitation on his last visits to Israel in 2018 and 2019. According to Bundeswehr spokesman Boehnke, “the Air Force can look back on many years of intensive cooperation with the Israeli Air Force”. German Eurofighters last took part in an exercise in the Negev desert in 2019. "After the Shoah, a crime against humanity, 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," explains Gerhartz. He would therefore like to thank his Israeli colleague, General Norkin, and all his pilots for their trust and emotional connection. "The darkest chapter in German history today is our mission to fight anti-Semitism with all consistency," said Gerhartz.
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