Today is "Dresden Day."
Fifty-four years ago today, the city of Dresden, which had no strategic military significance at all and which had become a huge refugee city for civilians fleeing the Red Terror, became a huge fireball in the fiercest Allied terror bombing ever.
David Irving has written about the Dresden Holocaust, and it is a book well worth reading - and one you will never forget.
It is estimated by some that as many as 350,000 - 600,000 victims were incinerated beyond being identifiable or even recognizable as human remains in that Holocaust. Only 35,000 could be identified.
Many of the pictures that people were served up as "pyres of gassed Jews " from Auschwitz and elsewhere in early Allied "atrocity flicks" are, in fact, photographs the Wehrmacht took of German victims of the Allied war crime of Dresden.
The War Department, describing another city, Hamburg, described how people died in such a firestorm:
"Literally hundreds of people were seen leaving shelters after the heat became intense. They ran across the street and were seen to collapse very slowly like people who were utterly exhausted. They could not get up."
A reporter, Melitta Maschman, wrote of what happened in the City of Darmstadt:
"There was not a house anywhere in the street which had not turned into a blazing firebrand. Above the sea of flames, a glowing cyclone raged over the town, and whenever it caught the bodies of people in flight, it shriveled them in a second to the size of a child, and the next day they lay all over the streets, hardly burnt, but like mummified children."
Robert Lenski in his description of the Second Zundel Trial in 1988, described how Ernst Zundel remembers a similar Holocaust, February 23-24, 1945,
". . . which Zundel will never forget, when "golden" Pforzheim was firebombed and consumed by a red cyclone. Though the Zundels' house lay 12 miles distant, the sky above was brilliantly illuminated, and huge neighboring connifers bent toward the city center as if in a gale of wind. The Pforzheim fireball was sucking oxygen toward itself from throughout the surrounding countryside. Zundel, not yet six, watched mystified as millions of leaves and branches were sucked violently skyward, with a howl and a roar."
A similar fire bombing took place a month later. The target was the City of Würzburg, a much smaller town than Dresden. Just last night I read that Würzburg was firebombed on the very day Anne Frank died of typhus in Bergen Belsen.
As the entire world knows by now, "Anne left a diary" - a manuscript which, incidentally, proved highly questionable as to its authenticy. It was partly written in a ball point pen - a gadget not in general use until 1953.
There were lots of bombing raids in the early and even late spring of 1945 when the war was already technically lost. More than 5000 casualties of the Allied "Würzburg-Holocaust" were incinerated in one of the last massive bombing raids of World War II.
These German victims' wartimes stories are not known.
They left no diaries.
They perished in the flames of the devastating inferno of March 16, 1945 - among the thousands of victims of this Allied atrocity the following women and children named "Anna":
Anna Maria Katharina Adler, geb. Steinel, Amalienstraße 2
Anna Baadsch, Ursulinerstraße 13
Anna Baetz, Marktplatz 6
Anna Barth, Büttnerstraße 3
Anna Klara Barz, geb. Kinzig, Nonnenfeld 22
Anna Basel, Pfauenstraße 2
Anna Bieneck, geb. Schaneng, Sicherstraße 31
Anna Maria Bieneck, Sicherstraße 31
Anna Bischoff, geb. Breunig, Theaterstraße 20
Anna Margarete Bittler, Franziskanerstraße 14
Anna Maria Bittner, geb. Höhn, Franziskanerstraße 14
Anna Blank, geb. Fleischmann, Arndtstraße 33
Anna Braun, Steinheilstraße 4
Anna Lina Breunig, Marktgasse 7
Anna Brückner, geb. Lukesch, Friedrich-Spee Straße 32
Anna Diem, Sanderstraße 7
Anna Katharina Dietz, Theaterstraße 9
Anna Dinckel, Gerberstraße 21
Anna Maria Margarete Dursch, geb. Fuchs, Neumannstraße 8
Anna Sofie Dürr, Sanderstraße 10
Anna Eckel, geb. Sdrzalek, Domstraße 19
Anna Maria Luise Elzinger, Rotkreutstraße 21
Anna Eppler, geb. Wagner, Traubengasse 19
Anna Maria Eyssen, Herrnstraße 9
Anna Faber, geb. Petres, Weingartenstraße 24
Anna Stephanie Federl, geb. Fürter, Ottostraße 10
Anna Feser, Peterplatz 3
Anna Fieger, geb. Lamm, Steinhellstraße 12
Anna Else Emma Berta Fick, geb. Schultze, Augustinerstraße 22
Anna Josefine Rita Firsching, Burkarderstraße 24
Anna Flach, Randersackerer Straße 10
Anna Forst, Ursulinergasse 5
Anna Fretz, geb. Bodmann, Steinheilstraße 39
Anna Barbara Freitag, geb. Reuss, Herzogenstraße 11
Anna Fröhlich, Oeggstraße 1
Anna Frosch, geb. Hartwig, Bibrastraße 6
Anneliese Funke, Altes Gymnasium
Anneliese Gärtner, Franziskanergasse 4
Anna Gebhard, Arndstraße 6
Anna Gehrling, geb. Amend, Schenkhof 3
Anna Göbel, Ludwigkai 9
Anna Franziska Gotthardt, geb. Ott, Pleicherpfarrgasse 6
Anna Maria Gottwald, Zwinger 22
Anna Grail, geb. Zeitz, Weingartenstraße 15
Anna Granacher, geb. Weingart, Am Pfarracker 20
Anna Josephine Grimm, geb. Sendelbach, Haugerkirchplatz 9
Anna Grötsch, geb. Prechtl, Am Pleidenturm 6
Anna Therese Maria Grosch, geb. Keil, Friedrichstraße 19
Anna Dorothea Grossberger, geb. Wörrlein, Ottostraße 10
Annemarie Haag, geb. Hirth, Otostraße 14
Anneliese Haeckel, Wöllergasse 6
Anna Hahn, geb. Brehm, Oswaldspitalgasse 15
Anna Emilie Hain, Randersackererstraße 12
Anna Emma Hain, Randersackererstraße 12
Anna Dorothea Haufmann, geb. Gropp, Schiestlstraße 3
Anna Heilmann, Friedenstraße 44
Anna Maria Heinrich, geb. Fischer, Domstraße 38
Anna Hem, geb. Grünewald, Semmelstraße 24
Anna Maria Herbert, geb. Schellenberger, Arndtstraße 6
Anna Herzog, Sanderstraße 33
Anneliese Hess, Moltkestraße 10
Annastasia Höller, Domerschulstraße 5
Anna Margarete Hoffmann, geb. Scheid, Gerbrunner Weg 50
Anna Hüge, geb. Ohlsen, Schlörstraße 2
Anna Maria Hufgard, geb. Dumproff, Neumannstraße 16
Anna Illig, geb. Ackermann, Fichtestraße 19
Anna Keller, geb. Liebstückel, Steinheilstraße 5
Anna Elise Kimmel, geb. Küchler, Oswaldspitalgasse 17
Anna Kinzig, geb. Kuhn, Gallstraße 1
Anna Karolina Köhler, geb. Schmitt, Matterstockstraße 17
Anna Krämer, Textorstraße 13
Anna Krines, Herzogenstraße 7
Anna Katherina Kübert, geb. Hummel, Sanderstraße 4a
Anna Kuhn, geb. Kuss, Grombühlstraße 47
Anna Berta Irmtraud, Winterleitenweg 16
Anna Leimeister, Kapuzinerstraße 4
Anna Lieselotte Lindner, Theaterstraße 23
Anna Lippert, Neubaustraße 42
Anna Löhr, geb. Badum, Prymstraße 13a
Anna Lotter, geb. Münch, Fichtestraße 18
Anna Maria Lutz, geb. Heimer, Neubaustraße 38
Anna Meinberger, geb. Geiger, Neubaustraße 7
Anna Theresia Mark, geb. Götz, Klosterstraße 25
Anna Markert, geb. Bayer, Ingolstadter Hof 4
Anna Metz, geb. Alzheimer, Weingartenstraße 18
Anna Moser, Riemenschneider Straße 9
Anna Müller, geb. Wittstadt, Maxstraße 9
Anna Münch, Domerschulstraße 2
Anna Barbara Mulfinger, geb. Wolf, Neumannstraße 10
Anna Nauer, Korngasse 22
Anna Nieberding, geb. Dietz, Theaterstraße 9
Anna Oeffner, Sanderstraße 27
Anna Ortloff, Ludwigkai 9
Anna Ostberg, geb. Wallrapp, Sanderstraße 27
Anna Pfannes, geb. Gerber, Haugerkirchgasse
Anna Pfeuffer, Martinstraße 13
Anna Margarete Pfülb, geb. Beck, Oswaldspitalgasse 15
Anna Rausch, beg. Nusser, Steinheilstraße 33
Anna Rheinthaler, Erthalstraße 2
Anneliese Reiter, Steinheilstraße 24
I would like you to honor and remember these German victims of a deliberate Allied policy with genocidal overtones in a few moments' worth of silence.
And then I would like you to spend some time pondering the latest, genuine hate message sent to the Zundelsite by an anonymous, genuine hater - just so you know what we are fighting, and understand what we are up against.
Ingrid
Here is that Thought for the Day, courtesy of someone who calls himself CdtIkitSFS@aol.com:
"Are you saying that the Holocaust was faked? Are you some kind of Neo-Nazi? If you are, I hope you will be confined to a hell so horrific, you'll praise the maggots that gnaw on your flesh."
Back to Table of Contents of the Feb. 1999 ZGrams