This was the Frauenkirche in Dresden: The Church of Our Lady*, originally built in the 1100s in romanesque style before the Protestant Reformation, and rebuild/extended in the 18th Century.
This is what the ruins of the Frauenkirche looked like after WWII.
East German authorities decided to not rebuild the church, and leave the ruins as a memorial. The people of Dresden had no say in this.
(In my own town, authorities decided to not add the top of the church tower, after rebuilding the building, because then the church would have been the highest building in the town. And that would have been the wrong message. The highest building in the town had to be a socialist building! Ironically, quite a few people chose this very building to jump from.)
When I visited Dresden in the 1980s, it was a pathetic sight — a heap of rubble, overgrown with grass, surrounded by a silly fence, in the center of the city. It was not perceived as a memorial of any kind, just as an eyesore and an obstacle.
After the fall of the wall, the citizens of Dresden decided to rebuild the church. Having seen the ruins, I was extremely skeptical — I had no idea what dedicated people are capable of.
Financed entirely by donations, this is what the Church of Our Lady looks like today:
This church had been a pile of debris for sixty years
Nothing is going to stop the citizens of Paris from rebuilding Notre Dame.
I am also optimistic because everything about Notre Dame is well documented; the restaurateurs have decent material to work with.
Edit: Wow, what a coincidence:
* Our Lady = Notre Dame
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