About 5,000 neo-Nazis gathered in the eastern city of Dresden on Saturday to stage a provocative funeral march remembering German victims of the Allied air raid that flattened the baroque city 65 years ago. In the past few years, the February 13 anniversary of the destruction of Dresden, in which 25,000 people were killed, has become a focus for neo-Nazis who describe the blanket bombardment as a "bombing Holocaust".
About 7,000 people were expected to join the march this year, which would make it Germany's biggest far-right march since 1945. Police fear clashes with thousands of anti-Nazi protesters, 10,000 of whom formed a human chain in the city centre both to remember victims of the war started by Germany and to show their opposition to far-right groups.
Some 5,000 officers have been brought in from across Germany to help stop trouble. "The atmosphere is very heated between the two camps and we face a very difficult task today," a police spokesman said. At Dresden's Neustadt station, where trains packed with Jews departed for the Auschwitz concentration camp, several hundred neo-Nazis, clad all in black, gathered.
Some held pre-war German flags and a voice shouting "Strength and Honour" blasted out of loudspeakers. "We are gathered here to remember one of the biggest war crimes of World War Two," Kai Pfuerstinger, deputy head of the JLO Youth Corps East Germany far-right group, told the crowd. A debate about whether breaking public morale through the wave of raids was justifiable has rumbled since the bombing, which started on the night of February 13, 1945, and flattened the city. The defeat of Hitler's Nazis was imminent.
The attacks, by British and US bombers, used incendiary bombs which created an inferno that ripped through streets, burning and melting people and buildings alike. Dresden has only in the last decade been restored to its former glory, complete with its trove of cultural treasures. Senior politicians from Dresden and the state of Saxony and a representative of the Central Council of Jews laid wreaths at a cemetery where the victims of the bombardment are remembered.
Comments
Comments are closed.