Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met this evening (Tuesday), 25.1.05, in his Jerusalem office, with Holocaust survivors who are Air Force veterans and with the pilots who participated in the flyby over the Auschwitz extermination camp. A delegation of senior Air Force commanders and other VIPs also attended the meeting.
The Air Force personnel and the Holocaust survivors gave Prime Minister Sharon a photo of the Air Force flyby over Auschwitz.
Prime Minister Sharon thanked them for the historic gesture that they made and said: “Your flight over the Auschwitz extermination camp was a historic event and was a historic symbol for the Jewish People.
The flight was a warning that Israel will not allow such an event to recur. The flyby was a genuine protest against the fact that during those years there wasn’t even one person in the world who decided to use the air forces to attack the extermination camps. It would have been possible to save hundreds of thousands - maybe millions - of Jews and others if someone had cared.”
Prime Minister Sharon said that he felt that it was his and every Jew’s historic responsibility to defend fellow Jews and to remember that we can rely only on ourselves: “The State of Israel, the Jewish People and myself can rely only on you. You, the Air Force, would never allow such an event to take place.”