Obit watch: March 29, 2019.

I think this is a swell NYT obit for Michel Bacos. (Previously.)

His death was announced by Christian Estrosi, the mayor of Nice, where Mr. Bacos lived.
“Michel bravely refused to surrender to anti-Semitism and barbarism and brought honor to France,” Mayor Estrosi said. “Michel was a hero.”

…

“There was no way we were going to leave — we were staying with the passengers to the end,” Mr. Bacos (pronounced bah-COSE) told the Israeli website Ynetnews.com in 2016. “This was a matter of conscience, professionalism and morality. As a former officer in the Free French Forces, I couldn’t imagine leaving behind not even a single passenger.”
As he recounted to the BBC that year, “I told my crew that we must stay until the end, because that was our tradition, so we cannot accept being freed. All my crew agreed without exception.”

…

[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu tweeted this week that Mr. Bacos had “stayed with the hostages through all their hardships, until I.D.F. soldiers — led by my brother Yoni — freed him in a daring operation.”
“I bow my head in his memory,” he added, “and salute Michel’s bravery.”

(For those unfamiliar with the Entebbe raid: Yonatan Netanyahu was the leader of the assault force, and was killed during the attack.)

Returning to Israel in their military transport plane, the commandos fetched Mr. Bacos from the cabin. “Your place is not here,” he recalled a soldier telling him, “but in the cockpit.”

…

Michel joined the Free French Forces as a teenager during World War II and was stationed in Morocco as a naval aviation officer.
“I fought the Nazis,” he said. “I knew precisely what fascism was all about. The genocide is a horror that none of us had forgotten.”

…

Mr. Bacos allowed himself a two-weak break after the hijacking. But once back from vacation, he requested a specific destination for his first flight: Tel Aviv.

Awful lot of dust in the air this morning.

Edited to add 3/30:

This entry was posted on Friday, March 29th, 2019 at 6:50 am and is filed under Obits, Planes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “Obit watch: March 29, 2019.”

  1. timothy lyle kies says:
    March 30, 2019 at 6:55 pm

    I read the book, Raid on Entebbe, and it told about the bravery of Yoni Netenyahu, and he was actually considered a great hero among the Israeli people. Of course, his brother Benjamin was also in the military, and fought with honor, but the loss of Yoni during the raid was a blow to the people, because he was so well loved, and admired.