A white rose for Valentine's day

It was not easy to get into Dresden on Valentine's day. The authorities had re-routed the bus and tram lines to avoid the centre. Although it seemed that some were taken by surprise, it really should have been expected. The police don't take any chances whenever there is a major demonstration by the far right.

The 14th of February has been a cursed day in this city since 1945. On the night of the 13th-14th February of that year, the forces of the RAF's bomber command executed perhaps the most notorious air raid in the European theatre. Two waves of bombers, spaced 3 hours apart, dropped thousands of tons of high-incendiary bombs on Dresden, creating in their wake a devastating firestorm which engulfed the heart of the city. When the morning came, the survivors found that the fire had consumed 34 square kilometres of their home and some 25000 of their neighbours, all but obliterating one of the most beautiful baroque cities in Europe.

Today, 64 years later, the casual visitor might not notice anything amiss. The landmarks of the old city such as the Semperoper, the Zwingler, or most famously, the Frauenkirche, have been rebuilt to their former glory, and the city presents a most beautiful view from the parks on the opposite side of the Elbe. But if you stay here and explore the city further, you will find evidence of it's destruction all around you.

Let us start at my own apartment on 75 Pfotenhauerstrasse. The house I live in was built in 1925, and presents a spartan but nevertheless elegant facade to the street. It is a "row house", sharing its edges with the neighbouring buildings, as do all the houses in my block. My bedroom is on the opposite side to the street, giving a view over the central courtyard. All the houses seem to be of roughly the same age and they fit together in near-perfect harmony.

But let's now go down to the street. Pfotenhauerstrasse runs roughly East-West, and my apartment is at the eastern end of it. Looking further in this direction, you can make out the buildings of the university hospital. But let's turn to the West, and begin to walk towards the centre of the city. On either side of the street you see brightly painted row houses. If it is a sunny day, the windows across the street dazzle with the reflection of the sun-lit houses on our side.

After a block, things start to change. On the other side of the street the row houses abruptly stop, replaced by the car park of the local supermarket, or just waste land. Every now and then you notice a stand of row houses, but these are clearly much younger than my own. Another city block, and now all the older terrace houses have disappeared. On your right you find the first of the looming communist-era highrise apartments, forming what seems a yawning canyon through which Pfotenhauerstrasse has cut its path. If I understand correctly, in these few city blocks we have crossed the limit of the bombing's destruction.

It is cold outside so we go back to my apartment. You stand by the window looking over the street, warming yourself by the radiator. You can barely visualize a stranger standing there 64 years ago, shaking from the cold, or from the night's terror, or in ecstatic relief at their own survival. You struggle to picture the streetscape, strewn with broken glass, dislodged bricks and tiles, ash and dust, and the burned and maimed limping along the road to the hospital. With each year, these ghosts will become harder to see.

Today the bombing of Dresden has become a symbol, and therefore political. I don't think that the far right marchers come here to remember the dead, as otherwise they would appear in number also in Hamburg, or Nurenberg, or Pforzheim. What is truly horrifying about Dresden is that what happened here is not unique, but was repeated time and again across Europe and Asia. If you care to lay a white rose on one of the few low-key monuments around the city on St Valentine's day, remember that every death is a tragedy, and that in the logic of war which language you speak is irrelevant.

I did not buy a white rose on Saturday. Instead, I went for a short walk through the suburb I live in, and tried to imagine a city I will never see.