Dignitaries and residents of Dresden joined hands on Friday evening to form a human chain in commemoration of the Second World War firebombing raids on the city which began on February 13th, 2015.
German president Joachim Gauck and Dresden mayor Helma Orosz took part in the chain, after both earlier addressed an audience inside the Frauenkirche, or Church of Our Lady, nearby.
The church ceremony and human chain were intended as expressions of support for policies of peace abroad and tolerance at home, according to officials.
People hold hands to form symbolic human chain of solidarity. Credit: Reuters
Nazi propaganda from 1945 put the death toll from the raids at 200,000 and after the war some scholars estimated as many as 135,000 thousand were killed.
More than the combined total of those immediately killed by the nuclear blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
After neo-Nazis began inflating the figure further, talking of 500,000 to 1 million victims of a "bombing Holocaust," the city established an expert commission to investigate.
It concluded in 2008 that closer to 25,000 people were killed in the attack.
