AP, Paris :
With quiet moments of memory or military pomp, leaders and ordinary citizens across Europe are marking 70 years since the Nazi defeat and the end of a war that ravaged the continent. But the East-West alliance that vanquished Hitler is deeply divided today.
Russia is celebrating Soviet wartime feats in a ceremony Saturday that is causing diplomatic tensions because of the country’s role in Ukraine’s conflict. Poland has held a ceremony meant as an alternative to Moscow’s.
Paris’ mile-long Champs Elysees was closed to traffic to make way for a procession of official motorcades and mounted military escorts that ascended the wide boulevard from the Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe, site of France’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
“The victory of May 8th wasn’t the supremacy, the domination, of one nation over another. It was the victory of an ideal over a totalitarian ideology,” President Francois Hollande said in a speech before arriving at the giant stone arch.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the U.S. ambassador to France joined French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius to lay a wreath at the tomb, in a sign of appreciation for the American role in liberating France from German occupation.
Photos taken 70 years ago show massive crowds of Parisians filling the Champs Elysees to celebrate the Nazi surrender, after nearly five years of occupation. May 8 is now a public holiday in France, but relatively few people turned out on the Champs Elysees Friday for the official ceremony.
Other ceremonies took place around Europe, including in Poland, where President Bronislaw Komorowski was joined by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and the presidents of Ukraine and several Central European countries for a ceremony at the site where some of the first shots were fired by Germany against Poland at the start of the war on Sept. 1, 1939.
In Germany, top officials gathered at Berlin’s Reichstag parliament building for an hour-long commemoration of the end of the war in Europe.
Another report adds: A new symbol, date and even name: Ukraine is distancing itself from Russia as it marks 70 years since victory over Nazi Germany in World War II while locked in a brutal conflict with pro-Moscow rebels.
For the first time the ex-Soviet country that lost millions of soldiers and civilians in fighting on both sides of the frontline during the war will mark May 8 — a date celebrated across much of Europe — as a “Day of Memory and Reconciliation”.
The traditional Soviet-era holiday May 9 remains Victory Day commemorating the Nazi defeat but, unlike in Russia, where a grandiose military parade will be held on Red Square, Kiev is planning a low key “March of Peace” by Ukrainian and European army bands.
Military cadets will also take an oath in front of Ukraine’s pro-Western President Petro Poroshenko at Kiev’s World War II museum.
“The Ukrainian commemorations, unlike those in Russia, are intended not to show aggression and military might but to remember those who died,” Ukraine’s presidency said in a statement.
Taking a leaf from the pages of countries such as Britain, Ukraine has also introduced the poppy as the official symbol for the event — pointedly eclipsing the orange and black Saint George’s ribbon that is ubiquitous in Russia and among the separatists.
With quiet moments of memory or military pomp, leaders and ordinary citizens across Europe are marking 70 years since the Nazi defeat and the end of a war that ravaged the continent. But the East-West alliance that vanquished Hitler is deeply divided today.
Russia is celebrating Soviet wartime feats in a ceremony Saturday that is causing diplomatic tensions because of the country’s role in Ukraine’s conflict. Poland has held a ceremony meant as an alternative to Moscow’s.
Paris’ mile-long Champs Elysees was closed to traffic to make way for a procession of official motorcades and mounted military escorts that ascended the wide boulevard from the Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe, site of France’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
“The victory of May 8th wasn’t the supremacy, the domination, of one nation over another. It was the victory of an ideal over a totalitarian ideology,” President Francois Hollande said in a speech before arriving at the giant stone arch.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the U.S. ambassador to France joined French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius to lay a wreath at the tomb, in a sign of appreciation for the American role in liberating France from German occupation.
Photos taken 70 years ago show massive crowds of Parisians filling the Champs Elysees to celebrate the Nazi surrender, after nearly five years of occupation. May 8 is now a public holiday in France, but relatively few people turned out on the Champs Elysees Friday for the official ceremony.
Other ceremonies took place around Europe, including in Poland, where President Bronislaw Komorowski was joined by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and the presidents of Ukraine and several Central European countries for a ceremony at the site where some of the first shots were fired by Germany against Poland at the start of the war on Sept. 1, 1939.
In Germany, top officials gathered at Berlin’s Reichstag parliament building for an hour-long commemoration of the end of the war in Europe.
Another report adds: A new symbol, date and even name: Ukraine is distancing itself from Russia as it marks 70 years since victory over Nazi Germany in World War II while locked in a brutal conflict with pro-Moscow rebels.
For the first time the ex-Soviet country that lost millions of soldiers and civilians in fighting on both sides of the frontline during the war will mark May 8 — a date celebrated across much of Europe — as a “Day of Memory and Reconciliation”.
The traditional Soviet-era holiday May 9 remains Victory Day commemorating the Nazi defeat but, unlike in Russia, where a grandiose military parade will be held on Red Square, Kiev is planning a low key “March of Peace” by Ukrainian and European army bands.
Military cadets will also take an oath in front of Ukraine’s pro-Western President Petro Poroshenko at Kiev’s World War II museum.
“The Ukrainian commemorations, unlike those in Russia, are intended not to show aggression and military might but to remember those who died,” Ukraine’s presidency said in a statement.
Taking a leaf from the pages of countries such as Britain, Ukraine has also introduced the poppy as the official symbol for the event — pointedly eclipsing the orange and black Saint George’s ribbon that is ubiquitous in Russia and among the separatists.
