Israeli Air Force flight over Auschwitz

On September 4, 2003, three F-15 planes took off from the Radom airport in bad weather and flew about 200 km above a thick layer of clouds before descending to a low altitude of 1,200 feet and flying in formation over the camp.

They flew over the gate, the railway, the ramp, and the array of Israeli Defense Forces soldiers, while Amir Eshel read a short paragraph he had written especially for the occasion over the intercom system.

The paragraph honored the victims of the Holocaust and reaffirmed the commitment of the Israeli Air Force to protecting the Jewish people and their country, Israel: We pilots of the Air Force, flying in the skies above the camp of horrors, arose from the ashes of the millions of victims and shoulder their silent cries, salute their courage and promise to be the shield of the Jewish people and its nation Israel.

"[4][6] Shevach Weiss, the then-ambassador of Israel to Poland, responded to the objections by insisting that the flyover was "not a demonstration of military power" and that "officers do not fight here, they cry here".

"[9] The flyover was also defended by the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, whose director Dr. Rafael Medoff said the event was "an important reminder that Allied planes flew over the notorious Nazi death camp in 1944, but knowingly failed to bomb the gas chambers and crematoria where 1.5-million Jews were murdered".