[Peace-discuss] Fw: Dresden Beats the Nazis

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Subject: Dresden Beats the Nazis


> Dresden Beats the Nazis
> 
> By Victor Grossman,
> 
> Berlin
> 
> The Berlin anti-fascists waiting near the Spree River
> at 4.30 AM for the buses to Dresden were sleepy, cold
> and nervous. Not without reason. Some had faced the
> Nazis a year earlier. Every year these latter day storm
> troopers try to misuse the emotions of Dresdeners
> mourning the loss of 25,000 to 35,000 people in the
> bombing inferno which incinerated the city on February
> 13th 1945 by downplaying the Holocaust and Nazi crimes
> in general.  The antifascists always oppose them. But
> last year it was again they who were treated coolly by
> the authorities. The police took their time at the city
> limits frisking them for weapons and then concentrated
> on protecting the Nazis. While driving home a bus load
> of union members was severely attacked by Nazis from
> Sweden; one man's skull was fractured. The attackers
> have never been apprehended; the police said they were
> "overburdened." And this year the Nazis threatened to
> break all records with 10,000 adherents from near and
> far. Just in case, the antifascists were given maps,
> telephone numbers and as well as tape for the bus
> windows in case stones were thrown.
> 
> They felt somewhat safer when they got moving, with
> 1300 people from Berlin. When buses from the state of
> Brandenburg joined up they formed a convoy of 30 buses
> for the 2-3 hour trip. The police checkup at the
> Dresden city limits was quicker and far less unfriendly
> this time. They had barely arrived when they heard
> calls to "Hurry up, our blockade is forming!" 29 buses
> rolled in from all parts of Thuringia, others were
> arriving after a long night's trip from the Rhineland,
> a group from Vienna had arrived a day earlier.
> Legislators from The Left held four ?open air caucus
> meetings? and attracted local inhabitants; a famous
> leftwing singer attracted more. Before long four main
> groups had formed, with two to five thousand people
> each, waiting in the icy cold, sitting on mats,
> stamping their feet or sipping hot tea or soup, and
> effectively blocking off, from all sides, the big
> railroad station where the Nazis planned to start their
> march. Two organizations had joined and prepared this
> demonstration for a whole year, the main one called
> "Dresden Nazi frei" ("free of Nazis"), the other using
> as its name the Spanish Civil War slogan, "non
> pasaran".
> 
> Two very different events were planned across the Elbe
> River which bisects Dresden. One was the habitual
> ceremony at the cemetery, in front of the memorial
> monument to all those who died during the inferno which
> engulfed Dresden 65 years ago. The mayor of Dresden,
> the minister president of Saxony, of which Dresden is
> the capital, a leading rabbi and Jewish representative
> and other celebrities were present, but also a menacing
> contingent of black-clad Neo-Nazis, including some from
> their small but loud-mouthed caucus in the state
> legislature.
> 
> But this year the Dresden authorities had altered their
> previous attitude of routine, half-hearted opposition
> to the Nazis. Looking in their direction, Mayor Helma
> Orosz, a Christian Democrat, spoke more clearly than
> many other politicians in recent years:
> 
> "By working together and protesting jointly, opponents
> of the rightist extremists , whether they are radical
> leftists or Christian Democrats, antifascists or church
> groups, can prevent them from spreading their inhumane
> National Socialist ideology, their racism, anti-
> Semitism, their lies and their distortions of history?
> 
> "Before Dresden burned, Semper's synagogue burned,
> Warsaw, Rotterdam and Coventry burned. These truths
> must be used in confronting these latter-day warriors.
> Dresden does not want them."
> 
> Last year's images of marching Nazis, sent out
> throughout the world, had evidently alarmed both
> Dresden's conservative leaders as well as a large
> number of its citizens. In the early afternoon, it had
> been decided, a human chain would link the rebuilt
> synagogue with City Hall to demonstrate their
> opposition to the Nazis. There were doubts as to
> whether the required 5,000 people would take part. But
> they did. By 2 o'clock there were so many that the
> single chain became a double line. Then it was extended
> around the Old Market Square, where thousands of
> corpses had been collected and burned in 1945, then on
> to the newly-rebuilt Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady)
> and the grandly rebuilt Opera House. An estimated
> 15,000 took part, often for the first time in such a
> demonstration. After the chain was dissolved some tried
> to cross the river to join the blockades, not easy
> because both a railroad bridge and some pedestrian
> bridges had also been blockaded.
> 
> Meanwhile tension was mounting at the railroad
> station, the same one from which a last group of
> Dresden Jews had been sent off to the death camps just
> before the bombing raid. Police forces, three deep,
> protected the Nazis when they marched from their buses
> to the station, though some smaller gangs vandalized
> through the area, attacking one left-wing youth center
> and injuring several of its defenders, one of them
> severely. There were a few minor skirmishes with less
> disciplined anti-fascists, the violence-prone types
> who join in most demonstrations, but most Nazis were
> finally cordoned off by the police in front of the
> station, impatient, angry, occasionally violent ? but
> cornered. Although the courts had given official
> permission for the Nazi march, against the protest of
> the city of Dresden, a police spokesman said that the
> force of almost 5,700 in uniform, plus 1,700 as
> reinforcements from other states, was unable to break
> up the blockades of the antifascists, now at least
> 10,000 in number, and including both elderly people
> and women with children. All they could do was
> maintain the safety of the estimated 6,400 fascists in
> front of the station until 5 PM, when the time
> allotted them for their demonstration ran out, and
> then get them away safely.
> 
> So the crowd, overwhelmingly young, with many from The
> Left and from several Communist parties, also from
> union groups as well as some Greens and leftwing Social
> Democrats, waited patiently in the cold, kept their
> ears to their cell phones and pocket radios and waited
> for new developments. They cheered at 5 o'clock when
> the police announced that the Nazi march had been
> canceled but stayed on to make sure and then cheer even
> louder at about 7 PM when the police refused the Nazi
> demand to march back to their buses and loaded them
> instead on trains which kept them off the streets. And
> then, in a twitter message, the top Nazis made it
> official: "The mourning march did not take place."
> 
> After a final victory meeting the demonstrators ended
> the ten hour blockades and headed home. It was good
> that the mayor and the big shots had also opposed the
> Nazis and that so many people in Dresden had given up
> their apathy and joined them. It was a surprise that
> this time the police had been fairer than ever before
> in recent years. But the real victory in stopping the
> Nazis, and just possibly making them give up Dresden
> marches in the future:  that, the tired antifascists
> were convinced as they headed for home, had been
> achieved by their powerful blockades.
> 
> Many of them won't be waiting a year to demonstrate
> again. Only one week later, Saturday, February 20, a
> demonstration is scheduled in Berlin to pressure the
> Bundestag and German government leaders to pull the
> troops out of Afghanistan.
> 
> 
> February 16 2010
> 
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