Hamburg has thought of Allied air raids 75 years ago on city. “We need to remember past to be people with a future,” said Catholic Archbishop Stefan Heße at a commemorative event in main church of Sankt Michaelis.
Hamburg is one of most devastated cities in World War II. The most following were Allied air raids of “Operation Gomorrah” from July 25th to August 3, 1943. Large parts of Hamburg, especially east of Alster, were in ruins, at least 34,000 people died. The Church of St. Nikolai, whose tower served as a landmark for bomber pilot, was also destroyed in attack. Its ruins are now a central place of remembrance and memorial.
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Bishop Heße said that Germany was not innocent of victims of attacks, and urged need for reconciliation. “We must be deeply grateful in Germany for fact that after war hand to reconciliation has been extended to us after all that our country has brought about Europe, and indeed world,” Archbishop said.
For evangelical Bishop Kirsten Fehrs, memory also means reworking: “The destroyed human lives cannot bring back no one, bodies and souls of survivors drawn for life also do not.”
Fehrs said that pictures and reports from Syria would show that this reminder is not heard again and again. “It is all more important that we do not get tired of stressing again and again with people of all religions: war must not be according to God’s will,” said bishop.
The commemoration of Allied bombardment was repeatedly controversial in Federal Republic. Thus, author, W. G. Sebald, in his Zurich Poetikvorlesungen 1997, lamented that trauma of air war had been largely supplanted and had hardly left a “pain trail”.
Only in February of this year Dresden Mayor Dirk Hilbert (FDP) said at an official event on occasion of destruction of city 73 years ago: “Remembrance culture is not only dropping of wreaths, but also in a very special way Social educational work with a clear relation to present “. In city, right-wing radicals have been instrumental in commemorating victims for decades on anniversary of bombing in frebrary.
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At memorial of St. Nicholas Church in Hamburg re is a special exhibition commemorating bomb attacks.
