It seems somewhat like an escape the way people in Dresden are behaving. Everything is oriented in relation to the Nazis. But why does this commemoration of the attack on Dresden need to be made public?
Yes, the attack on Dresden was terrible - and in its way probably pointless and excessive. Just like the Hamburg firestorm. Or other attacks on German cities. Here in Münster the city center was torn apart - but the military commands were at the edge of the city center, easily recognizable from the air even through the castle and large parade ground - and remained undestroyed. Any more questions?
But what was the cause? Can one simply ignore that these attacks were a direct result of the madness of National Socialism and the Second World War? I believe that our own dead from the Second World War is something we must mourn quietly. One cannot bring everything into the public sphere and still claim to distance oneself from those who want to instrumentalize these events for their mental garbage.
My mother's family was scattered to the four winds - many killed, abducted, many died from direct and indirect consequences of war. Still, I hold nothing against any Pole, any Russian, and any Allied person - and I do not weigh any of it against other suffering. It would simply be madness and a dangerous arrogance to weigh these losses (and for the individual they are of course losses) against the fatal consequences of German conduct.
No, some mourning must take place quietly, without grand ceremonies. Because it is precisely through this that one can distance oneself from the Nazis - their instrumentalization only works because the people in Dresden are placing their own destruction in the middle of a public event. And thereby providing a platform for right-wing garbage.
No tears before Krauts? I think that's wrong. But tears may also flow quietly.