Читать книгу Diversity in the East-Central European Borderlands - Группа авторов - Страница 28

The city’s remaining Jews were excluded from the society and concentrated in special Judenhäuser. Between July 1941 and June 1943 they were deported to death or concentration camps. The Storch Synagogue and the police department at Odertor (today Nadodrze) station were used as assembly places for deportation.85 Many inhabitants were fooled into a false security, because Breslau was spared from fighting and served instead as a logistic hub supplying the eastern front. Among the local opponents of the Nazis was the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer from Breslau, executed in April 1945, who led the “Confessing Church” (Bekennende Kirche), combatting totalitarianism and anti-Semitism.

Among 150,000–250,000 civilians and tens of thousands of forced laborers, prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates remained when the Soviet Army arrived in February 1945. Street-by-street fighting through the affluent district around Hindenburgplatz, turned whole neighborhoods into rubble. Along several streets, the Germans burned down buildings, including the Museum of Applied Arts, to create defense lines. Buildings along Kaiserstraße were demolished to make space for an aircraft runway, which was never used. The Cathedral and other churches and historical buildings were destroyed in battles. Festung Breslau, not allowed to surrender, withstood attacks until 6 May 1945, claiming the death of around 60,000 civilians.

After the war, Breslau was one of the most severely damaged cities in Europe. Sixty per cent of the buildings were destroyed, but still the old urban structure and many important buildings remained (cf. Thum 2011: xxii–xxxi).86