Word: dresden
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President Barack Obama spent his day Friday, in advance of the 65th anniversary of D-Day, immersed in this contradiction. The morning began in Dresden, the site of one of World War II's worst firebombings, an hourlong aerial bombardment that killed probably tens of thousands of civilians. He visited the Frauenkirch Dresden, a soaring Baroque Protestant church that was destroyed in 1945 by Allied bombs and then rebuilt in 2005, restored to its gilded splendor. In a corner of the church, he lit a candle to remember the dead. (See pictures of Obama in Germany...
Read "Obama in Dresden: the Non-Controversy Controversy...
...both sides of the Atlantic, much has been made of Barack Obama's decision to spend Thursday night in Dresden, the German city known primarily as the site of a horrific bombing campaign by U.S. and British forces just months before the end of World War II. The bombing, which lasted 63 minutes, started fires that ultimately claimed the lives of between 18,000 and 25,000 Germans, according to a recent report by historians commissioned by the city...
...Germany, speculation surfaced in the press that Obama's decision to visit Dresden, instead of the capital of Berlin, could be seen as a slight to Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, who faces challenging parliamentary elections in September. In a press conference Friday morning, Obama himself knocked down this idea, saying the choice of Dresden had more to do with his tight schedule, which left scant time between his Egypt visit and his visit Friday afternoon to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp and the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, where he will meet with wounded U.S. soldiers. (See pictures of Obama...
...Obama praised Merkel's leadership, calling her "my friend." The two national leaders met privately for roughly an hour at Dresden Castle, a Thirteenth Century building that has been rebuilt since the 1945 bombing, discussing a wide range of issues, from Iran, to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to issues of global warming and the economic downturn. (See pictures of heartbreak in the Middle East...