DRESDEN, Germany (Reuters) - At least 10,000 Germans formed a human chain in Dresden on Saturday and stopped neo-Nazis staging a funeral march to remember victims of the Allied air raid that flattened the city 65 years ago.

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About 5,000 neo-Nazis, clad in black, had gathered at Dresden's Neustadt station -- where Nazis once packed trains with Jews bound for the Auschwitz concentration camp -- hoping to stage Germany's biggest far-right march since 1945.

In the past few years, the February 13 anniversary of the destruction of Dresden, in which 25,000 people were killed, has become a focus for neo-Nazis who describe the blanket bombardment as a "bombing Holocaust."

But large numbers of anti-neo-Nazi protesters, who turned out despite freezing temperatures, stopped the far-right sympathizers from getting into the town center.

"Stopping the Nazi march was a great success for the Nazi Free Alliance Dresden," said Alliance spokeswoman Lena Roth.

"It wasn't easy -- there were people injured in Nazi attacks and it was horribly cold, but it was worth it," she said.