Far right marks 65th anniversary of Dresden bombing; counter demonstrations expected

Protests on Dresden bombing anniversary

DRESDEN, Germany — Thousands of neo-Nazis and their opponents protested Saturday in the eastern German city of Dresden on the 65th anniversary of the deadly Allied bombing at the end of World War II.

Heavy security was in place to prevent clashes between the two groups, with five police helicopters flying overhead to monitor the crowds. Though some stones and snowballs were thrown, police said so far the two sides have largely been kept separate.

Far-right organizers have characterized the event as a “mourning march” — and mainstream political parties and civic groups were equally determined to protest far-right attempts to exploit the city’s painful history.

Leaders of Germany’s far-right fringe have caused outrage in the past by comparing the bombing of Dresden to the Holocaust.

Mayor Helma Orosz said she hoped thousands would join 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.

Police braced for up to 7,000 far-right supporters from Germany and other European countries but so far only 1,300 had arrived, police spokesman Thomas Geithner said.

“The most important task for us is to keep both blocks separated and not to allow them any contact,” Geithner said.

About 2,000 left-wing counter-demonstrators gathered a few hundred yards (meters) away, with many trying to block roads to prevent far-right supporters from reaching their assembly point.

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 told The Associated Press.

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.

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.

The total number of people killed in the Dresden bombing has long been uncertain. In 2008, a panel commissioned by state officials found that the firebombing killed no more than 25,000 people — far fewer than scholars’ previous estimates that ran as high as 135,000.

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.