Like a phoenix, Dresden’s magnificent Frauenkirche, a masterpiece of baroque architecture, has risen from the ashes, its amazing 10-year reconstruction the result of “the most successful initiative of ordinary citizens” in German history.

Slaughterhouse-Five on the Elbe River is about one mile from the city center and was only slightly damaged in the raids.

While some of the buildings have been recently renovated to form part of a convention center, much of the slaughterhouse complex remains as it was when Vonnegut and other prisoners-of-war were held here.

It was a working slaughterhouse until 1995.
 
 
 

When the ornate gold cross, donated by Britain’s Dresden Trust, is set atop the pinnacle of the dome on June 22, 2004, it will mark 10 years of reconstruction, the most extensive rebuilding effort in German history. Aaron Smith, the British goldsmith who created the new pinnacle cross, exactly like the original, is the son of one of the British Lancaster pilots who bombed Dresden in 1945.

The sandstone Frauenkirche, originally designed and built in 1726-1743 by State Master Builder and Architect Georg Bähr, was considered, before its destruction, to be the most significant church building of German Protestantism and one the great masterpieces of European architecture.

The rebuilding of the church’s interior with its famous Gottfried Silbermann organ from 1736 will be finished for the church’s re-opening on October 30, 2005, in time for Dresden’s 800th anniversary in 2006.

The initiative to rebuild the Frauenkirche began with a group of 14 citizens led by Dresden musician Ludwig Güttler in 1990. Today the society funding the rebuilding has more than 6,400 members in Germany and 20 other nations.

In the United States the rebuilding effort is supported by Friends of Dresden, Inc., headed by the Nobel laureate Dr. Günter Blobel who donated the $1 million he received when he won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1999.

The reconstruction, when completed, will have cost some $170 million, most of which was raised through individual donations. Some $12 million is still needed.

While the rebuilding of Dresden’s Frauenkirche has a special significance, there are a number of architectural masterpieces in the Saxon capital, formerly known as “Florence on the Elbe,” which have been completely restored since 1945. Among these are the Semper opera house, the Zwinger galleries, and the Catholic cathedral.

As the people of Dresden remembered the destruction of their city and the loss of life on Feb. 13-14, 1945, a controversial book about the Anglo-American firebombing attacks appeared in British and American bookstores.

Dresden, Tuesday, February 13, 1945 by Frederick Taylor has been praised by a number of reviewers in Britain and the United States. The Chicago Sun-Times described Taylor’s work as “a masterpiece of scholarship and evenhanded reporting.”

“He absolves the Allies,” The Scotsman (UK) wrote. Taylor’s “robust defense of the Dresden raid,” the left-leaning Guardian wrote, “…demolishes the legend that Dresden was purely a cultural center.”

While reviews in the British press praise Taylor’s defense of the firebombing for setting the “record straight,” the largest German daily, Bild, said his book was “like a blow to the face of the victims.”

As the people of Dresden commemorated the attacks with performances of Mozart’s Requiem in the Semper opera house, Taylor’s book created a scandal with its thesis that the incendiary “area bombing” and destruction of Dresden was “completely justified and useful,” Bild reported.

“A ruthless act of war,” Taylor told American Free Press about the Dresden attacks. Asked if he thought the firebombing of Dresden’s city center was justified, Taylor said, “Judged by the standards of the time it was a legitimate military target.”

However, neither the huge military base across the river nor the industrial areas around the town were targeted. Asked why the city center had been attacked, Taylor said, “That was how the British did city attacks then.” Communication centers, meaning the railroad stations, were the primary targets of the raids, he said.

Taylor said he had come to the same conclusion as Götz Bergander, author of Dresden im Luftkrieg in 1994. Bergander’s work has not been translated into English. There were 8 Allied bombing raids against Dresden between Oct. 7, 1944 and April 17, 1945. While U.S. bombers attacked Dresden six times, it was the two British night attacks of Feb. 13-14 that were the most devastating.

The first British attack, which began at 10:03 p.m. and lasted 25 minutes, involved 243 Lancaster bombers. Three hours later, at 1:23 a.m., 529 Lancasters began bombing for another 32 minutes. These are the devastating raids that The Independent (UK) said, “went horribly right.”

The British Lancaster bombers dropped one 8,000-pound explosive device and 529 4,000-pound bombs while releasing 1,181 tons of incendiary bombs during the Ash Wednesday attacks. The British tactic of “area bombing” caused huge firestorms that incinerated complete city centers.

The British tactic of creating firestorms in German cities was a “dark art,” according to The Independent’s Nicholas Fearn. The combination of high explosive munitions and incendiaries created firestorms that killed everything within a huge area. “Those above ground would be burned alive,” Fearn wrote, “while those taking refuge underground would be overcome by carbon monoxide poisoning.”

“The fire-bombing of the city of Dresden in February 1945 became probably the most controversial operation carried out by British and American forces during the Second World War,” Roger Hutchinson of The Scotsman wrote.

“A fire storm engulfed the old center of Dresden. It was deliberately created to leave no human life in its wake. Men looked from above, aghast at what they had wrought. Men, women and children down below were boiled alive in the supposed sanctuary of fountains and reservoirs,” Hutchinson wrote.

The painstaking rebuilding of Dresden’s magnificent opera house, art galleries, and churches is a remarkable achievement, and the buildings’ scorched stones serve as silent reminders of the holocaust that destroyed the historic old city and untold thousands of innocent victims in a matter of hours.

On April 17, 1945, 580 U.S. B-17 bombers dropped 1,555 tons of bombs and 165 tons of incendiary devices on Dresden. Taylor said some of the U.S. bombs were dropped on Prague by mistake.

The number of deaths caused by the firebombing remains controversial. The official figure is based only on the number of corpses that could be identified: 35,000. However, with thousands of refugees passing through Dresden and the huge piles of corpses that were cremated in the market square, some historians estimate that more than 200,000 died in the bombing of Dresden.

Art Shay, who flew combat tours over Germany in 1944-45, reviewed Taylor’s book for the Chicago Sun-Times. Taylor’s “masterpiece of scholarship,” Shay wrote, “gives the lie to much of Slaughterhouse-Five.” Slaughterhouse-Five is the title of a 1969 novel by American author Kurt Vonnegut.

“When my kids learned I had been on the Dresden mission,” John Skallerup of Chicago told Shay, “they stopped talking to me. I had murdered innocent children and 135,000 people…They learned about it in school from that Vonnegut novel they were teaching.”

While Slaughterhouse-Five is synonymous with the destruction of Dresden for many Americans, in Dresden the connection between the old slaughterhouse and American literature is virtually unknown.

As an American prisoner-of-war, Vonnegut knew his camp as “Slaughterhouse-Five,” which is actually the post address of the slaughterhouse’s administration building. Vonnegut survived the bombing in a cellar and saw the destruction of Dresden first-hand as he participated in the recovery and cremation of the corpses. Five years ago, Vonnegut returned to Dresden and visited the slaughterhouse where he had been held as a P.O.W.

A small three-star hotel called Wenotel, built in 1982, stands on part of the slaughterhouse grounds today. The walled complex, built by Dresden’s architect Hans Erlwein in 1906-11, was Europe’s most modern livestock- and slaughterhouse of its era.

Dresden is known for being the place where the first sewing machine was invented. The bra, the manufactured cigarette, tea bag, squeezable toothpaste, and the latex condom were all invented in Dresden.

The people in Dresden were unaware of the connection between this slaughterhouse and the work by an American survivor of the bombing.

This is because the book was not well known in East Germany, and also because the camp was never known as Slaughterhouse 5 -- that was just the number of the administration building that received the mail destined for the POWs who were kept in the slaughterhouse during the war.

Below is an article that the Dresden newspaper wrote about Bollyn's research.  The Dresden media was largely unaware of Kurt Vonnegut's book Slaughterhouse 5 and the old slaughterhouse on the edge of town.

This is the first sentence of Claudia Schade's article translates to:

Searching for Slaughterhouse 5

For many Americans the administration building of the slaughterhouse in Ostragehege has a special meaning.  Very few Dresdner's, however, know anything about it.

Auf der Suche nach Schlachthof 5

Warum ein alter Keller auf dem Messegelände im Ostragehege für viele Amerikaner so interessant ist

Von Claudia Schade

Für viele Amerikaner hat ein Verwaltungsgebäude des Schlachthofs im Ostragehege eine besondere Bedeutung. Doch nur wenige Dresdner wissen davon.

Zwei Tage habe er gebraucht, bis er das Gebäude gefunden habe, schimpft der amerikanische Journalist Christopher Bollyn. Und dort sei noch nicht einmal eine Gedenktafel angebracht. Er habe schon überlegt, ob er nicht selbst etwas ankleben solle.

Bollyn hat wie Millionen US-Bürger in seiner Highschool-Zeit den Roman „Schlachthof 5“ im Unterricht behandelt. In diesem Buch verarbeitete der Schriftsteller Kurt Vonnegut seine Erlebnisse als Kriegsgefangener in Dresden. Er war mit anderen alliierten Soldaten im Schlachthof untergebracht, überlebte dort den Bombenangriff in einem Keller und wurde später zur Bergung der Toten eingesetzt.

Die meisten Anfragen zum Jahrestag des Angriffs

„Wir bekommen öfter Anfragen von Ausländern zum Schlachthof“, sagt Rathaussprecher Karl Schuricht. „Darunter viele von Amerikanern und meist zu der Zeit um den 13. Februar, dem Jahrestag der Bombenangriffe.“ Auch die Verantwortlichen der Messe kennen die Geschichte des Gebäudes, das Hans Erlwein geplant hat und in dem heute die Messeverwaltung untergebracht ist. „Häufig kommen amerikanische Touristen und fragen nach dem Haus“, sagt Messe-Sprecher Tobias Blaurock. „Oft sind das bewegende Momente, wenn Familien über das Gelände gehen und sich mit Tränen in den Augen an eigene Erlebnisse oder an die Erzählungen ihrer Großeltern erinnern.“

Wer aber nicht selbst den Weg zum Messegelände findet, hat es schwer. Weder in historischen Büchern über Dresden noch in Reiseführern noch in Informationsblättern der Dresden-Werbung und Tourismus GmbH ist etwas darüber vermerkt. Auskunft: mangelhaft.

Auch viele Dresdner wissen nichts von den amerikanischen und britischen Kriegsgefangenen. Was hier eher eine Randbegebenheit des Bombeninfernos darstellt, hat in den USA jedoch eine vollkommen andere Gewichtung. Viele Schüler erfahren durch den Roman, der als eines der großen Anti-Kriegsbücher gilt, erstmals von der Zerstörung Dresdens. In den USA hat sich sogar ein Verein der Ex-Gefangenen gegründet, der 42 Überlebende und 80 Verstorbene sowie 41 Verschollene des Schlachthofs 5 gezählt hat.

Wie viele Amerikaner damals tatsächlich im Ostragehege festgehalten wurden, ist allerdings ungeklärt. Einige Quellen sprechen von 150, eine Aufstellung nach einem Befehl von 1945 von 77 US-Bürgern. Gefangen genommen wurden die Soldaten während der Ardennen-Offensive Ende 1944. Dann wurden sie nach Dresden gebracht.
 

Raum blieb fast unverändert

Obwohl es sich bei seinem Bestseller von 1969 um einen Roman handelt, versichert Kurt Vonnegut seinen Lesern zu Beginn des Buches: „Alles das hat sich mehr oder weniger so zugetragen. Jedenfalls entsprechen die Abschnitte, die den Krieg betreffen, durchaus der Wahrheit.“ Seinen Titel hat das Werk der damaligen Postadresse Schlachthof Nr. 5 zu verdanken. Tatsächlich befindet sich der Keller, in dem der Autor die Angriffe auf die Elbestadt miterlebte, an der heutigen Adresse Messering 6.

Der Raum selbst blieb über die Jahrzehnte fast unverändert. „Wir durften ihn nicht ausbauen“, sagt Blaurock. In dem sanierten Gebäude, an dem ein Schild mit der Aufschrift „Eingang Süd und Halle 1“ prangt, führt ein steile Metalltreppe in den Keller. Am Boden lassen sich noch die Abtrennungen für Boxen erkennen, in denen Rinder vor der Schlachtung untergebracht waren. Die Wände sind mit weißen Kacheln verkleidet. Ein Großteil des ursprünglichen Kellers ist allerdings nicht mehr zugänglich. Er wurde unter der heutigen Messehalle 1 mit Beton verfüllt.

Kurt Vonnegut, Schlachthof 5, Rowohlt-Verlag, 6,50 Euro.
 

Note: I don't know what happens if you donate money or order books from Bollyn! He was providing his articles for free and depending on sales of his ABC book for children, and on donations. His charming ABC book is  here.

Please pass links to his articles, and try to find more people to join us in our struggle to expose corruption. Don't let "them" get all of us! Show some concern!