A few days ago, I found myself in Dresden, Germany. It’s a bit of a strange choice for a German destination, especially one’s first, but I was in transit back to Paris with some friends and it was the most convenient place to spend the day. We were coming from Vienna and Prague, two pristine Central European cities, and I knew Dresden would be different.

I’d heard of the city for only one reason: Slaughterhouse Five. The book takes place during the infamous firebombing of Dresden, a bloody episode at the end of World War Two. Kurt Vonnegut, the author, was there when it happened, he was a prisoner of war just like his protagonist, hiding while the bombs fell.

I’m a Vonnegut fan. He can write one hell of a sentence. “The gun made a ripping sound like the opening of the zipper on the fly of God Almighty.” Horror and humor. I tried to envision it on the bus, passing by all those old battlefields.

We got stopped at the German border. My friends and I have all traveled in the EU a few times now, and Germany was the first country that asked to see our passports. The border patrol guys marched down the bus aisle, and we handed them our papers one by one. Our French student visas got an extra squint before they moved along.

From what I understand, Dresden was once Germany’s most beautiful city. It was a cultural landmark, a treasure. The Allies destroyed it in 1945 and, at the time, there wasn’t a clear reason why. It was brutal, vicious, and some say completely unwarranted. Twenty-five thousand people, mostly civilians, died in the firestorm. Today, the bombing is seen as an expression of pain and anger – retribution for the atrocities the Nazis inflicted on the world. It was the willful destruction of something sacred to Germany, and the intentional slaughter of German citizens.

It was impossible not to think about all that while wandering modern-day Dresden. There is some beauty left. We found the old area of town, a ring of ornate buildings made of weathered, blackish sandstone. They were all covered in statuary – naked children, dancing women. In the middle of it all, there was a huge expanse of construction. And once we left that square, Dresden was a different city. Modern, brutalist in some places, barren in others. It was a Sunday, there wasn’t much to do. So we sat by the river and tried to picture it how it used to be.

“Dresden was one big flame,” Vonnegut wrote. “The one flame ate everything organic, everything that would burn.”

It did make me think about Gaza. Every day there are more deaths in the headlines, more neighborhoods laid waste. It is such an angry retaliation. Dresden suffered huge losses at the hands of the Allies and their angry retaliation. A punishing parallel.

It makes me wonder how we’ll look back on this war, the current one. Kurt Vonnegut needed Tralfamadorians and time travel to make sense of what he witnessed in Dresden.

“Those with eyes had seen it burn and burn, understood that they were on the edge of a desert now,” he wrote. “Still – they had opened for business, had polished the glass and wound the clocks and stirred the fires, and waited and waited to see who would come.”

We came, nearly 80 years later. We found Dresden peaceful, families on the street, bratwurst kiosks on the corner. Sleepy, but alive. With the horrors of its past repeating, safely, half a world away.