February 13th each year is the day that the destruction of Dresden during World War II is commemorated. By the end of the three-day Allied bombing attack, the German city had been destroyed and over 100,000 were dead. Apologists for the bombing insist only 25,000 were killed in the firestorm, a figure that has been shown to be false many times.
“Whoever had forgotten how to cry, learned again at the destruction of Dresden. I stand at the end of my life and envy my dead comrades, who were spared this experience.”
Gerhard Hauptmann
“Over 1,000 participants attended this year’s Dresden commemoration. They came from all parts of Germany and from many European countries. Delegations from the Czech Republic, Serbia, Italy, Spain, Hungary, the Netherlands, Sweden and Belgium gathered at the parade ground.
This year’s route led us through streets that were almost entirely newly developed. After the bombing raids, all that was left of the old Dresden was rubble. The memorial march was correspondingly calm and solemn.“
Letter from the city of Dresden shows 202,040 recovered dead
Edda Schmidt was able to enrich the commemoration again this year with a speech. She read an official letter from the city of Dresden. In this it was reported that by March 20, 1945, the Dresden police had recovered 202,040 dead, mostly women and children . Of these, only about 30 percent could be identified.
Extract from the dresden-gedenken.info website 13.02.23.
Victor Gregg, who was being held by the Germans as a prisoner of war at the time, said: “The normal brain would never take it in. It was terrible, demonic, evil.”
He told ITV News that he can still smell the “rotting flesh” in the rubble and recall the young bodies of children burned into a “gooey mess of jelly” by the 1,500°C heat of the bombing attack.
“The whole of the centre of Dresden was one big fire bomb and it was increasing by the minute, you never saw any children, the children were all melted.”
And he still maintains the British-led bombing raid is a war crime for which those who helped win the war, Winston Churchill included, should have been punished.
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Main Image: Dreden Gedenken 2023.
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