AN EDUCATIONAL AND EXCITING ENCOUNTER BETWEEN ISRAELI AND CZECH STUDENTS
The Joe Alon Connection Program was established in 2019 for Israeli and Czech high-school students. It includes preparatory offline study sessions in the homeclasses, online sessions with both classes, and mutual delegations. During the program, students are exposed to questions of personal-communal-political identity, learn about the shared history of both nations, the loss of the Jewish community during the Holocaust, the current way of life in both countries, geography, culture, sports, art and more. The tour of delegations from the Czech Republic includes visits to heritage and historical sites in Israel, museums and natural sites throughout the country, as well as family, community and Israeli recreation. The tour to the Czech Republic includes visits to sites of Jewish and historical significance, excursions in diverse landscapes and participation in various cultural events.
The goals of the program:
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To deepen familiarity with the culture, society and history of Israel and the Czech Republic, to create a direct and personal encounter between youth through shared learning, and to establish true friendship between young people from both countries.
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To impart humanistic values that will lead the world to a better future, while exposing the face of a beautiful, innovative, progressive and ethical Israel.
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To perpetuate the memory of the late Colonel Joe Alon, a descendant of a Czech father who trained as a pilot in Czechoslovakia before the establishment of the state of Israel. Joe was one of the founders of the Israeli Air Force, among others. A fighter pilot, commander of Hatzerim air base and an air attaché in Washington.
Pedagogical management:
Tomer Baratz is the program's pedagogical adviser since it was established. A first-rate educator developer and director of a variety of channels and fields. He holds a bachelor's degree with honors in political science and public communication, a master's degree in organization and management of educational systems, an educational innovation coach and a graduate of the "Chotam" program, a graduate of the MindCET fellowship program from CET, and a remarkable man.
My Vision
I believe that human beings have much more in common over what is different.
The life of my father, Joe Alon (formerly Placzek), a Jew, was saved thanks to the willingness of my German grandmother and Czech grandfather to put their trust in Nicholas Winton, a British citizen. During World War II, he worked to remove children from Czechoslovakia to families in England. My father was adopted by a childless Christian couple, who saved his life. Unfortunately, my grandparents perished in Auschwitz in 1945. Joe trained as a pilot in Olomouc, immigrated to Israel in 1949, served as a fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force, and helped establish a home for the Jewish people in the State of Israel. He married my mother, Dvora, a Yemen-born woman, had three daughters and was murdered when I was five and a half years old, while an air attaché in Washington, D.C., on July 1, 1973.
I established The Joe Alon Connection Program in my father's name, in order to prove that personal acquaintance, embracing humanistic values, and studying chapters of history in which citizens and leaders came to the rescue to do good, are a guarantee of a life full of meaning and hope.
"Love thy neighbor as thyself" (Leviticus 19, 17-18)
Rachel Alon-Margalit, Founder and Director, daughter of Dvora and Joe, RIP
Joe Alon (Josef Placzek)
Joe Alon was born on July 25, 1929 on Kibbutz Ein Harod. His parents, Tekla and Vítězslav/Friedl (in Czech/German) Placzek, had made aliya to Palestine as pioneers in 1922. For various reasons the parents decided to return to Europe in 1930. When World War II broke out, Joe, who was 10 years old at the time, and his 14-year-old brother, David, were sent to England on a Kinder transport organized by Nicholas Winton. There, Joe was fostered by Jenny and George Davidson, who were childless Christians. At the end of the war, Joe returned to Czechoslovakia in search of his parents, only to discover that they had been and murdered in Auschwitz, after both imprisoned in the Theresienstadt Ghetto.
Joe moved to the city of Brno with his uncle Oskar, a Holocaust survivor himself, and began studying goldsmithing. At the end of his studies, at the outbreak of the War of Liberation, he joined a pilot course that opened in Czechoslovakia on behalf of the "Haganah", and in 1948 he began the first pilot course of the Air Force in the city of Olomouc. A year later he returned to Israel, enlisted in the Air Force and was trained as a fighter pilot.
Joe successfully held various positions in the Air Force and was one of its founders. He was one of the first Israeli pilots to fly jet planes, he taught flying at the school and commanded three fighter squadrons of Uragan, Mister and Mirage planes. Joe was one of the founders of Hatzerim Air Force Base and its first commander. In 1970, Colonel Joe Alon was appointed Air Attaché at the Israel Embassy in Washington DC. On July 1st, 1973, about a month before the end of his term in the United States, Colonel Joe was shot dead in front of his home in Chevy Chase, Maryland. The motive for the murder and the identities of its perpetrators remain unclear to this day.
He left a wife, Dvora, and three daughters - Dalia, Yael and Rachel. His widow died in 1995.
In his memory, the Joe Alon Center and the Museum of Bedouin Culture were established, a forest was planted near Kibbutz Lahav in the Negev, and the Joe Alon Road leading from Be'er Sheva to Hatzerim Air Force Base was named the "Joe Alon Road".
