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Old September 7th, 2010 #1
Bev
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Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: England
Posts: 38,898
Default Dresden mayor to ask Boris NOT to buld London memorial to Bomber Command

Quote:
German politicians have called on Britain to abandon plans to build a memorial to RAF bomber crews.

Backed by Bild, their country's biggest daily newspaper, they said the idea was offensive to the 25,000 victims of the raid on Dresden in 1945.

'This memorial injures the feelings of Dresdeners and is utterly tasteless,' said Holger Zastrow, a Liberal party councillor in the city.

The calls coincided with the arrival in London yesterday of Dresden's mayor, Helma Orosz.



She is visiting the capital to open an exhibition detailing the bombing of London, her city and that of its twin, Coventry.

Bild ran a story yesterday with the English headline 'Please say NO,' adding: 'Today the mayoress has her chance to tell her official colleagues in Britain that she, like the queen, is not amused. Dresden has every reason not to be.

'This is a good opportunity for Orosz to express to her London colleagues the opinions of Dresdeners about the bomber monument.'

Over two days and nights in February 1945 British and American bombers turned the city into a sea of flames and rubble.

The victims - mostly women and children - died in savage firestorms whipped up by the intense heat of 2,400 tons of high explosive and 1,500 tons of incendiary bombs.

The raid was controversial because it came near the end of the war.

There is also debate about the value of Dresden as a military target.

The controversy was stoked in the early years by claims that up to 250,000 civilians had been killed.

But an official report published this year after five years of research by German historians concluded that the casualty figure was 25,000.

Ursula Elsner, 80, was a child when the bombers destroyed Dresden. She said: 'We rely on our mayor to use the strongest diplomatic language possible to express our strong concerns about this monument.'

Now writing a book of eyewitness accounts to the raids, she added: 'I find these plans both sad and macabre.

'Such a monument justifies the bombing attacks and damages the mutual reconciliation process of the past few years between Britain and Germany.'


The £3.5million RAF memorial is for the Piccadilly entrance to Green Park in London. Planners at Westminster City Council approved the proposal in May.

Bee Gees singer Robin Gibb, a key supporter, has said: 'Anyone speaking against it should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

'The whole world, including Germany, is free today because of Bomber Command's sacrifice.'

Built from Portlandstone, it will be open to the sky with the entrance made from sections of a Halifax bomber shot down during the war. A sculpture inside marks the loss of the plane's seven crew.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worl...#ixzz0ysd8E3qI



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