DRESDEN, Germany – Thousands of protesters formed a human chain in Dresden on Saturday, determined to stop neo-Nazis from exploiting the German city's painful history on the 65th anniversary of its deadly Allied bombing in World War II.
Across the Elbe River, some 10,000 people joined hands to create a human chain symbolically protecting the restored city center from neo-Nazis, after the city mounted an unsuccessful legal challenge to block the far-right march.
"Dresden doesn't want them, and this gang doesn't belong here," Mayor Helma Orosz said.
The human chain helps to "make Dresden a fortress against intolerance and stupidity," and the anniversary provided a reminder of who started the war, she said.
Three successive waves of British and U.S. bombers on Feb. 13-14, 1945, set off firestorms and destroyed Dresden's centuries-old baroque city center.
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Dresden has been rebuilt painstakingly over the years. Its landmark domed Frauenkirche, or Church of Our Lady — for decades no more than a mound of rubble — reopened in 2005.
Karolin Hanebuth, 20, came from Hannover in western Germany to counter the far-right protest.
"Fascism is not an opinion, it is a crime," she said.
The far right is marginal in Germany and has no seats in the national parliament. However, Saxony, where Dresden is located, is one of two eastern German states where the far-right National Democratic Party has seats in the regional legislature.
Go read about the Bombing Of Dresden. Arguments persist to this day, both for and against about whether the attack was militarily necessary and justified or a terror attack on civilians, immoral or a war crime, coming as it did toward the end of the war when Germany was just about whipped.
My personal thought is that, necessary or not, it was payback time and payback's a motherfucker.
Bottom line: WWII was Total War and the Nazis started it in the name of all Germans and Germans suffered for the crimes of their leaders. For the neo-Nazis to bring up this attack in an attempt to justify their own existence and deny the crimes of their forebears is a perfect example of the perfidy of right wings everywhere.
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