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from.– NAZI Legitimacy?
Neo-Nazis in march
By Alexandra Hudson in Dresden
WAVING black flags and carrying banners, at least 2000 neo-Nazis marched
in Dresden today, marking the official 60th anniversary commemoration of
one of the fiercest Allied bombing raids of World War II.
Before the march Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder pledged to stop far-right
groups exploiting the anniversary and portraying Germany as a war victim
while ignoring Nazi atrocities.
Politicians voiced concern the march might turn into Germany's biggest
far-right demonstration since the war and neo-Nazis might clash with
residents planning to turn out in their thousands wearing white roses in
a counter-protest.
British, American, French and Russian dignitaries due to attend events
meant to send a message of peace and reconciliation, whilst remembering
the crimes of the Nazis and those cities which shared Dresden's fate.
Official ceremonies began with a wreath-laying ceremony at a mass grave
while neo-Nazi marchers elsewhere in the city carried balloons saying:
"Allied bomb terror - then as now. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden and
today Baghdad. No forgiveness, no forgetting."
One banner read: "The bombing holocaust will not be suppressed".
Dresden, untouched by bombing just months before the end of World War
Two, was 85 per cent destroyed by two waves of British bombers on the
night of February 13, 1945. United States planes blasted the city the
next day.
The official death toll is about 35,000 but many survivors believe the
actual number was higher as bodies were reduced to ashes in the ensuing
firestorm.
"Thousands of innocent people, including many children and refugees,
died in most terrible circumstances," Mr Schroeder said in a statement
today.
"One of the most beautiful cities in Europe was destroyed. We mourn
today for the victims of war and violent Nazi rule in Dresden, Germany
and Europe."
Once dubbed the Florence of northern Europe for architectural jewels
such as the Zwinger Palace and the Semper Opera, the city was reduced to
smouldering ruins.
East German socialist town planners restored some historic buildings but
also tore vast concrete avenues through the city's heart. Today ugly
concrete housing blocks jostle with church spires on the city skyline.
Dresdeners take huge pride in the baroque Frauenkirche, rebuilt in the
15 years since German reunification in 1990, and topped last year with a
golden cross from Britain.
The anniversary has reopened a debate over how to mourn Germany's war
dead while containing the resurgent far right.
Mr Schroeder pledged to counter all attempts to distort history and
hinted he would make a fresh attempt to ban the far-right National
Democratic Party (NPD) which helped organise the march.
"We will use all means to counter these attempts to re-interpret
history. We will not allow cause to be confused with effect," he said.
"This is our obligation to all the victims of the war and Nazi terror,
especially and also the victims of Dresden."
Members of the NPD that sit in the Dresden-based Saxony state parliament
provoked outrage last month by walking out of a commemoration of the
liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp and calling the air raids a
"bombing holocaust".
Britain's ambassador to Germany, Sir Peter Torry, told the Tagesspiegel
newspaper likening the bombing of Dresden to the Holocaust was "highly
problematic" but played down the threat posed by the NPD.
The Nazis killed six million Jews in the Holocaust during World War Two.
"I would take the phenomenon seriously but not overrate it. The
neo-Nazis got into Saxony's parliament but on a low turnout," he was
quoted as saying.
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