Dresden Neustadt

I wonder how many people visiting Dresden for the Baroque riches of its Altstadt know about the extraordinary area across the river known as the Neustadt. I found out about it because my hotel was on the edge of it, not far from the Elbe. Looking across at the lovely skyline of the old city I could see plentiful evidence of the destruction visited on the city in Feburary 1945, but when I turned around I could only see street after street of handsome 19th century buildings. Indeed, the area is huge; it's one of the best preserved such areas in the whole of Germany and is home to many of the alternativ Germans -- those who belong to car pools or ride bikes, buy organic shampoo, protest against the Iraq war, and generally behave in such a civilised manner that you have to love and admire them. I liked the area because there are several excellent shops selling vinyl at pretty decent prices. As you head further away from the old city and beyond the Neustadt you begin to see old industrial buildings and barracks from the pre-war years. The Allies hadn't targeted these areas at all: their demented rage was vented only on the area between the two main railways stations and out to the large park in the east, i.e. the old city, the Florence of the north. As I walked back to the river and followed the contour of the old city from the opposite bank, I tried to imagine American fighter aircraft strafing and killing nurses and civilians as they tried to drag people from the river (this account is disputed by some); I tried to imagine the Canadian airforce bombing the park (Grosser Garten), the third wave of this war crime, where people had taken refuge, scattering limbs into trees; I tried to imagine the vast tank of water near the Frauenkirche that people jumped into to save themselves from incineration but were then unable to get out of; I tried to imagine the period after the bombing when it seemed that the Frauenkirche had survived, but then it exploded in flames to join the rest of the holocaust. Allied prisoners-of-war joined in the grim task of digging the wounded and the tens of thousands of dead out of the ruins. They were just as stunned as the people of Dresden, who had mistakenly believed that the Allies would never destroy a cultural jewel of such insignificant strategic importance and annihilate so many defenceless people.