[contingencies]

A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. - Stalin

Regardless of the deaths, I understand the cultural tragedy of the destruction of Dresden is significant as it was an important intellectual center.

I had a friend who passed away recently who was a boy in the bombings and recounted with tears on multiple occasions, as a lifelong opiate addict, how he felt he had personally died at that time. I visited the city a few years ago and found the largely depressing husk of a city still under wishful reconstruction. The nominal activity of its touristic center was at direct odds to the clearly economically depressed suburbs mere moments away.