AUSCHWITZ, POLAND - Israeli fighter jets flew over the notorious Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland on Thursday in memory of Holocaust victims, despite protests at the fly-past.

The F-15s, emblazoned with the Star of David, were piloted by the sons or grandsons of Holocaust victims who perished in Poland, according to the Israeli ambassador to Warsaw.

An Israeli air force statement said that as the jets flew low across the sky the pilot leading the the squadron, general Amir Eshel, said: "We pilots of the air force, in the skies over these camps of shame, have risen from the ashes of millions of victims. We are the voice for their silent calls. We salute their heroism and promise to be the shield of the Israeli homeland."

Earlier the ambassador Shevah Weiss joined about 150 Israeli soldiers and a number of Israeli civilians for a ceremony at Birkenau in memory of the six million Jews exterminated by the Nazis in World War II.

The museum on the site of the camps said Wednesday it deplored the decision to go ahead with such a show of Israeli force over a site where about 1.1 million Jews perished.

But Weiss said that the fly-past was not a demonstration of force. "It was a final burial," he said.

"These soldiers are here today to say farewell to the ashes of their loved ones. They wept at the controls of their aircraft," he added.