YOU won’t remember me but our paths crossed when
we were both students at Imperial College [London
University].

In the introduction to your book on Dresden you state that you first heard of the atrocity from some newspaper or magazine you read when you were working in
Gemany. However, I clearly remember hearing of the destruction of Dresden from you when I was at Imperial (1958-61). If I am not mistaken, it was over a coffee in the cafeteria in the Union building. It was the first time I had heard of such atrocities being committed by the Allies and that is why your recounting of it has stuck in my mind.

Is my memory correct? Please clarify if you would.

Jeremy
I. Pfeffer

Physics Teaching Laboratory Faculty of
Agricultural, Food and Environmental Quality
Sciences
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Rehovot
Israel

Tel: 08-9489367; 054-648197 Fax:
08-9363951

NICE to hear from you. It is many years ago,
over forty to be precise, and we both may be right. I
worked in the steelworks from autumn 1959 to spring 1960.
My memory is that on my return I used to come to the
Imperial College Union Building sometimes to use the
cafeteria (I may be wrong). I don’t
THINK I had heard of the Dresden
raids before working in Germany.

I then heard of them
from two sources: (a) a German illustrated magazine
(Quick, Revue or some such magazine) published a
series on the war called something like Die Lichter
gingen aus über Deutschland, the Lights went out
over Germany. This described the air raid in vivid
detail. (b) My roommate in the steelworks
Ledigenheim (dormitory), an elderly steelworker
who came from Leipzig, said he had been in Dresden that
night.

If you can recall further details of our
conversation, it might help nail it down.

Incidentally, I roomed with (or just above) a Jew at
Gloucester Road, Mike Gorb, my best friend there, who was later killed in a mountaineering accident; he had a Finnish girlfriend. And I was good friends with John
Bloc, another.

Not so friendly however with Peter
Levin, who is still something of an activist in
Hampstead, I hear (one of his neighbours, George
Stern, is a very good friend of mine and passes on to me the latest gossip).