German church, bombed in WWII, is rebuilt

DRESDEN, Germany, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- Dresden, Germany, was holding a ceremony Sunday to consecrate the new Church of our Lady, which was destroyed by Allied bombing during World War II.

But the rebuilding of the Frauenkirche, as the church is called, largely with U.S. and British money does not mark the end of the controversy over the bombing, the BBC reported.

More than 35,000 people died when Dresden was bombed on a February 1945 night.

The church burned and the East German government left its ruins as a remembrance of war's affects as well as a memorial to the people who died -- and an implied anti-Western symbol.

Historians argue whether those lives needed to be lost and say Dresden wasn't a militarily strategic point.