Dresden is the capital of the German state of Saxony. The city was famous for its baroque and rococo architecture but the Allied bombing towards the end of the war destroyed the city centre and killed over 25,000 people.
In 1933, 6,000 Jews lived in the city, but emigration, deportation and murder reduced that population to 41 in 1945.
Some of the Boys endured slave labour in Dresden, among them Roman Halter and Stephen Wolkowicz. Both were prisoners in the Lodz ghetto when it was liquidated in the summer of 1944 and were included on a list of experienced metal workers known at Biebow’s List.
Hans Biebow was a wealthy German coffee merchant from Bremen and was head of the Lodz ghetto administration and chose to protect a group of 500 Jews who he hoped would testify in his favour after the war. He was hung for war crimes in 1947.
When those on his list were deported to the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp there was no selection and they were transferred to the Stutthof concentration camp in northern Poland, where they were held until November 1944. They were then taken to Dresden, where they worked in a labour camp attached to the Flossenburg concentration camp.
Halter and Wolkowicz witnessed the bombing of Dresden. They were then part of a death march that left Dresden destined for Theresienstadt. Halter escaped but Wolkowicz continued on to Theresienstadt. During the march he lost both his parents.
Today, thanks to the arrival of Jews from the former Soviet Union, Dresden has a population of at least 700 Jews.