President Obama's visit to Germany on Friday linked two sites: the city of Dresden and the site of the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald outside Weimar.
Although they're over 200 kilometers apart, they share a common history. The atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis against the Jews during the Holocaust and the horrific firebombing of Dresden by US and British bombers display the indifference to humanity that underscores World War II, and, of course, all wars. Obama's choice of these two sites was an intentional act of reconciliation and remembrance, that neither may ever be repeated.
Dresden was the focal point of Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance With Death, reflecting his experience there during the War and serving as a kind of therapy for surviving the firebombing and the resigned acceptance, promoted by those who carried it out, of the thousands of innocent lives that were lost. Historians may argue the relative strategic importance of the city late in the war, but the justification of the act wears thin.
As a part-time musician living in North Conway NH, I often frequented the Otto Ninow Music Store in the center of town, mostly to buy guitar strings and later for beginning instruments for my sons. Otto had a bulletin board that displayed articles and business cards for local musicians and always gave us a discount. Usually there was no one else in the shop and he was quite the conversationalist, often making comments about the ebb and flow of the local business and the decisions of the town fathers.
One day Otto asked about my last name, was it German? He knew of course, and that led to an on-going conversation about the old country with new installments each time I entered the shop. I made sure to allow for at least 20 minutes for each visit.
Otto was from Dresden and was a mischling, a half-Jew, his father was protestant and his mother Jewish. His father was a band leader and Otto followed in his father's footsteps, and it saved his life. During the war he assumed a protestant identity and survived the war in-part by leading the Charlie Wonin (Ninow backwards) Band, many times entertaining the Nazis.
Otto described himself as an optimist and after the war opened a music shop in Riverhead, LI, New York, which is still operating I believe, and later his retirement store in North Conway. The latter had somewhat limited hours, especially during the ski season when he worked on the Ski Patrol at Black Mountain in Jackson. (Evening hours only) He kept up both commitments well into his eighties.
Otto Ninow: My Life, his autobiography (edited by Cronin Minton) provides some tragic insight into the Dresden firebombing. His mother, blind and 65, survived the bombing but later, after having the false assumption that her son was dead, took her own life. She and all 21 of Otto's Jewish relatives died in the war. Based on an unmailed letter she wrote to Otto after the bombing and a study of refugee movement to the city in advance of the Soviet movement from the east, Otto estimated the number of lives lost as not 35,000, but closer to 335,000. Though thankful to the Allies for his freedom from Nazi tyranny, he concludes that War is "LEGAL ORGANIZED MURDER."
Otto had an enduring motto: "Live every day on earth, and be happy with it, as though it were your last."
I haven't been to Dresden yet, but have it on my list of cities to visit.
