The week that brought freedom (we hope) to Egypt concludes with the memory of another event involving masses of people in a life-changing and state-challenging event. Tonight marks not only the eve of Valentine’s Day, but also the 66th anniversary of the bombing of Dresden.
Between 13 and 14 February 1945 the Allies dropped more than 3,900 tons of high-explosive bombs on the beautiful Baroque capital of Saxony. 3,600 planes, of which 1,300 were heavy bombers, dropped as many as 650,000 incendiar bombs and other huge devices. The intensity of the onslaught destroyed 15 square miles (39 square kilometres) of the city centre and killed tens of thousands of people.
A couple of years ago I was preaching in Meissen Cathedral, only a few kilometers from Dresden. At the end of the service I shook hands with several hundred people as they left. One man refused to shake my hand. When I asked him why, he said that he could not shake hands with an Englishman who had the nerve to preach in a German pulpit. He had lived in Dresden all his life and had endured that night in 1945 which saw his family destroyed and his city devastated. He understood why we had attacked Dresden, but couldn’t understand why civilians had been targetted so directly when communications networks were up and running again so quickly.
It is a bit rough holding me personally to account for what the Allies did before I was even born, but I could see the enduring grief in this man’s eyes. I responded by saying that my own family (parents and grandparents) had endured the bombing of Liverpool and that war brought only victims on every side. He believed the bombing of Dresden was a war crime; I didn’t disagree.
Yet, last year (2010) the neo-Nazis decided to demonstrate on 13/14 February. The former East Germany is said to be ripe territory for right-wing resurgence and Dresden offers an iconic locus of resentment and perceived injustice. Yet, counter-demonstrations challenged the simplistic associations of the neo-Nazis and reminded people of why the bombing happened in the first place: the Nazis, the War, the attack not only on other countries, but on German civil society, too. Many Germans are saying that they have to be careful about claims of victimhood in the light of the facts about 1933-45. The Germans who remembered went onto the streets and kept the neo-Nazi revisionists off the streets. This year up to 20,000 people took to the streets to remember the bombing, to remind the world why it happened, and to challenge those whose ideologically-driven grievances demand a re-writing of history.
The bombing of Dresden was horrendous and – to my mind, at least – still has not been justified. It has been often described, but not adequately accounted for. But, when up to 20,000 people remember the context in which the bombing took place 66 years ago, they challenge the revisionism and easy sentimentalism of the neo-Nazis.
In June I will once again stand in the pulpit of the Frauenkirche in Dresden. I will be there to deliver a Bible Study as part of the Kirchentag. The church has been completely restored, the gold cross on top of the dome having been made by the son of one of the British bombers. The church speaks of reconciliation and its task is not just limited to a memory of 66 years ago, but the ongoing reconciliation between people now and in the future.
However, reconciliation with the reality of history also remains a difficult and permanent task of those who do not wish history to be repeated.
February 14, 2011 at 12:28 pm
Hello Nick – I’ve only been a lay minister for 18 months but the more pastoral care I’m involved in, the more I’m aware of the huge number of hurting people there are around. I sometimes wonder whether evangelical churches where generally/often things/life are regarded as being wonderful, are good places for them to be??? Anne.
February 14, 2011 at 2:21 pm
Some years ago I was sitting on a bench amid the ruins of Coventry Cathedral. A small group of people were singing hymns in German. They were from Dresden.
I recall an article which suggested that the attack on Dresden was inspired more by the increasing political tension between the western allies & the Russians than by any military objective. True ?, I don’t know.
Was Dresden a war crime? , perhaps, but so were Wounded Knee, My Lai, etc ad infinitum. Was the Holocaust a war crime, or 9/11 ?
I have never really understood how we can legislate for war, how we can define whether a civilian in Coventry was killed legally or illegally by a bomb falling on his head.
The human being is an animal, and like all animals it will kill to survive. We are just a little bit better at killing than are foxes.
K
February 15, 2011 at 1:57 pm
Anne
You are right to ponder this. Only a few days ago I was praying with a lovely, gentle pastor and his wife who had been badly hurt by a power struggle in his Church. When boiled down it seems that the Church had attracted a number of people with hurts and welcomed them and loved them (great!) Sadly however it had done nothing about getting the hurts healed and so the people were angry and looking for someone to blame for their continued hurts, which they were themselves unwilling to give up and had taken them into fringe theological positions.
Its not an unfamiliar story and once again made me reflect on whether we do enough when people come into a Church to help them receive God’s healing and be made (more) whole before we move them on into roles within the fellowship.
I do believe Churches can be places of healing and love and warmth, but we need to think how we get there.
February 15, 2011 at 2:45 pm
I guess the process of reconciliation is about truth, responsibility and fostering trust, so hats off to Dresden’s anti neo nazi protesters for picking up the tab & showing faith in a better future. I am sorry for the man who wouldn’t shake hands though, what a burden he must carry, but if he won’t engage with the past and at least try & see a different point of view, I don’t see how he’ll shed it. Perhaps he doesn’t want to?
I googled ‘Atonement’ & came across an Auden quote (from his essay – ‘The Guilty Vicarage – Notes on the detective story, by an addict’);
‘Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness; it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.’
In the same essay he says ; ‘All crimes are offences against oneself’, well worth a read, apart from all that wisdom, it’s very entertaining.
There are many artistic responses to reconciliation that allow people space to reflect and are potentially quite healing – paintings, sculpture, buildings and monuments, gardens, poetry, music – they can all speak to us if we allow them to, regardless of the nature of the pain.
February 16, 2011 at 1:32 am
I sat with Jewish woman this last weekend who has been a believer (in Jesus as the Messiah) for a long time. She is married to a British Gentile Christian. Her parents were killed in Belsen, she lost Aunts and Uncles in the same way and has no other family of her or their generation. She was hidden by a family in Europe for the duration of the war. There is much more to tell of atrocities visited upon her. She believes in the Trinity, can love God and apprehends the Spirit but can not face Jesus, cannot pray.. eventually she said it was because these atrocities were done in his name. Though she knew it was false, nevertheless it was impressed upon her that it was in his service that her parents had been murdered. We talked for along time. I worked in Jerusalem for a number of years and made friends with young German who worked their too to make some kind of restitution by caring for elderly Camp survivors. My experience of visiting in Germany is of men and women with whom I spent time carrying a great burden of guilt for what their parents generation was deluded by and did. People who want to be forgiven. I have seen extraordinary individual acts of repentance and forgiveness amongst Christians who have suffered dreadful abuses and loss in Sudan and Congo when I have ‘ministered’ there. I saw forgiveness given at great personal cost but also at great personal gain as, once braved, the act of forgiving the enemy reaped a freedom from the burden of the pain of abuse and crime. Such forgiveness came because those who gave it were desperate to be rid of the fear and hate they lived under, and cried out to God the Son to free them and enable them to forgive. Anne and others are right to urge the church to minister healing through repentance and forgiveness. It is a process like that of cleaning out infected wounds which, as they slowly heal, need to be continually cleaned out of the gunk and any more infection that arises.It takes time and constant attention. The Jewish woman I sat with at the weekend and I spoke a little Hebrew with each other and we prayed a little-some thing she had not felt able to do at all. Next morning she prayed a little more about her pain and huge loss and slowly began to imagine that there would come a day when she may be able to be free of the fog of pain that had clung to her for 66 years. As a victim of a war crime she is now finding the very name that was used to perpetrate that crime is in fact the channel of healing for all the terrible damage wrought in her long life..
February 16, 2011 at 4:38 pm
what an incredibly moving post x
February 26, 2011 at 11:08 pm
While you pontificate about the bombing of Dresden you might do well to remember the rate at which the Nazis were throwing Jews into the ovens, all across central Europe at the exact same time.
My father flew on Lancasters (with less than 50% survival chances) and thanks to people like him, people like you can now do your hand-wringing and soul-searching in freedom.
He also saw first-hand just what the Germans did to the Jews and also the Russians (which you don’t hear so much of). Of course it is horrible to have to drop bombs on anywhere or anyone, but sometimes it has to be done as the alternatives are too grim to even think about.
It’s a pity the church as a whole, particularly the catholic church and the Muslims weren’t as courageous in the face of the anti-semitic Nazis as were our young men who died terribly in the air in their thousands, that you now wish to consider war criminals.
Easier from a pulpit than a cockpit, I guess.
February 26, 2011 at 11:26 pm
Steve, one crime doesn’t justify another. ‘Hand wringing’? Oh really… I am all too well aware of what the Nazis did and what the Russians did – I’ve been involved with both for a very long time. ‘German Christians’ were compromised – but large elements of the German churches were not. Do’t tell Bonheoffer and Niemoeller they weren’t courageous.
Easier on a blog than on the gallows, I guess.