By police accounts, it was the largest demonstration of its kind. Some 6,000 protestors gathered to remember the innocent victims of a bombing campaign that was so terrible it could be compared to the Holocaust. In fact, the banners they carried explicitly called it a ‘bombing Holocaust’.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators in London? Nope – neo-Nazis yesterday in Dresden.
The German left did not participate in the protest. Instead, they staged a counter-demonstration.
Just like the British left should have done when pro-Hamas demonstrators marched through London streets shouting anti-Semitic slogans.
5 Comments on "Protestors remember war victims, denounce ‘Holocaust’ bombing"
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Which slogans were anti-semitic?
Eric,
The comparison of the Dresden bombing to the Holocaust or the bombing of Hiroshima largely rests on Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse Five.
In the novel, Vonnegut quotes at length from the writings of David Irving.
This was an issue in Irving’s failed libel suit against Deborah Lipstadt.
Historian Richard Evans was a key witness in the trial. According to wikipeida
“Irving greatly exaggerated the death toll from the Allied bombing of Dresden, and also drastically under-reported the estimated death toll of the Holocaust. Irving then constantly used the unsupported estimates to draw false comparisons between the bombing of Dresden and the Holocaust. Irving based his inflated estimate of 250,000 Dresden dead on a document that was revealed to be a forgery. Even after the document’s authenticity was conclusively discredited, Irving continued to rely on it and publish his greatly exaggerated death toll. The actual death toll is generally recognized to be less than 50,000.”
Stuart,
The actual death toll was considerably less than 50,000 – probably half that number. And among Germans, it’s probably not Vonnegut’s book nor Irving’s, but more than 60 years of Nazi and now neo-Nazi propaganda that convinces so many that one can equate Allied bombing to Nazi genocide.
One can understand why Germans are eager to clear their national conscience, but why people like Irving are so eager to help them is less clear. Unless of course you assume that people like him are anti-Semites.
James,
From reports I have read, many demonstrators chanted pro-Hamas slogans in support of a Palestine that stretched from the Jordan to the sea. This desire to erase Israel from the map — openly expressed by Hamas’ backers, the Iranian regime — is in my view anti-Semitic by definition. (Unless of course you assume that the Israeli Jews will voluntarily march into the sea, admitting their guilt, which I think is a bit unlikely.)
Eric,
I thought the wikipedia number seemed high.
I was able to do some further checking and you’re right about the real casualty figures being lower.