Neo-Nazis hijack Dresden tribute

Candles spell out an inscription saying: "This town is sick of Nazis" at the Altmarkt square in Dresden, East Germany. Pictures / Reuters

Thousands of neo-Nazis hijacked official ceremonies marking the 60th anniversary of the allied bombing of Dresden in the biggest demonstration by the German far right since World War II.

More than 5000 neo-Nazis overran the East German city with a mass protest against "Anglo-American bomb terror".

The scale of the fascist turnout, although predicted, came as a major embarrassment to the city and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Government. Both had hoped the anniversary of the raid would be dominated by gestures of reconciliation.

Instead, militant neo-Nazis, who had bussed in from all over Germany, gathered behind Dresden's rebuilt Semper Opera house to hold a "funeral rally and march". The British and the Americans were bitterly attacked for the February 1945 raid, which was described as a "bomb holocaust" and example of "Anglo-American terror".

Holger Apfel, 33, leader of the far-right National Democratic Party (NPD), which won seats in the Saxony state Parliament in Dresden last October, appeared with other far-right leaders to castigate the British and Americans as "mass-murderers and gangsters".

"They have left a trail of blood that stretches from Dresden to Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and possibly Iran," Apfel told the crowd, to applause and chants of "murderers".

"We must not allow Germany to become the accomplices of American gangster policy," he said.

Waving black banners and black balloons bearing the slogan "Bomb Terror", the neo-Nazis also accused post-war Germany and the allies of deliberately downplaying the number of deaths caused by the bombing, which officially stands at 35,000.

On numerous placards written in Nazi-style Gothic script, they claimed that the true figure was 350,000.

The far rightists also flouted post-war German law by singing a folk version of banned national anthem Deutschland Uber Alles ("Germany above everything"), which was outlawed after the fall of the Third Reich.

Hundreds of left-wing anti-Nazi protesters, headed by an organisation called "No Tears for Krauts", attempted to shout down the neo-Nazis with whistles and catcalls. But they were kept at bay by thousands of green-uniformed riot police equipped with water cannons. Officers had been brought in from throughout southeast Germany for the ceremonies.

Earlier, neo-Nazis managed to largely dominate an official wreath-laying ceremony. It was attended by Jewish community leaders and the British and American ambassadors to Germany at the city's Heidehof cemetery, where the ashes of thousands of Dresdeners killed during the raid lie buried.

Groups of shaven-headed men in leather jackets and other apparently middle-class neo-Nazi supporters formed up in silence and laid their own wreaths at the site. They bore white ribbons with slogans such as "Dresden not forgotten, not forgiven".

One of their placards depicted a German woman fighting her way through the rubble of Dresden clinging to two badly mutilated and bloodstained children.

The neo-Nazi presence was particularly galling for the Dresden city council as the anniversary had been intended as a major gesture of reconciliation and as a sign that Germany had finally put World War II behind it.

To mark the occasion, the city had opened its painstakingly restored Frauenkirche church, whose ruins were once a symbol of the city's destruction. Rebuilding was finished this year, funded by donations from Britain and the rest of the world.

Recent opinion polls have showed up to 30 per cent of young Germans view the Dresden raid as an event comparable to the Holocaust.

Church leaders in Dresden have blamed hostility to the allies on East German communist propaganda, which for decades held that the raid was a needless act of "Anglo-American aggression" inflicted on innocent civilians.

Dresden Mayor Ingolf Rossberg said it had been impossible to ban the neo-Nazi demonstrations.

"So long as the NPD is an established political party with seats in a state Parliament, we cannot ban it from holding marches," he said.

Opposition politicians have blamed the rise in German unemployment - now at five million and the highest since 1933 when Adolf Hitler was swept to power - for the sudden reappearance of far-right organisations on the political scene.

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