Present threats invoked on VE Day
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EUROPE held sombre ceremonies to mark 70 years since victory over Nazi Germany yesterday, as leaders warned of modern-day threats such as the war in Ukraine and Islamic extremism.
Celebrations of the World War II victory in Europe were muted a day before Moscow rolls out its full military might at a parade which is being snubbed by Western leaders due to tensions over the crisis in Ukraine.
Poland opened Victory Day celebrations with a midnight ceremony in northern Westerplatte, where the first shots of the war were fired on September 1, 1939 as Nazi forces swept across the border.
In France, President Francois Hollande laid a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier at a solemn ceremony under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris after urging citizens not to grow complacent about war.
“We didn’t experience the war, we see it as a far-off reality, sometimes abstract, even though it is not so far from us, in Ukraine, further still in the Middle East,” he said.
Hollande also referred to the hundreds of French citizens who have gone to fight alongside jihadists in Syria and Iraq.
“There is also terrorism which can strike us, racism, anti-Semitism. There are still causes which should spur us on.”
France is still recovering from a jihadist killing spree in and around Paris in January which left 17 people dead over three days.
At the Cenotaph in London, 100 veterans watched as the Duke of York, representing the Queen, joined politicians, including newly re-elected Prime Minister David Cameron, and military leaders to lay wreaths.
US President Barack Obama expressed solidarity with Europe and hailing the victorious Allied troops as a “generation that literally saved the world.”
“For over five years, brutal fighting laid waste to an entire continent. Mothers, fathers, children were murdered in concentration camps,” Obama said in a radio address.
Victory day is marked across Europe on May 8, the day Germany surrendered, ending WWII in Europe.
Russia and former Soviet states mark the anniversary today due to a time difference during which the surrender became effective.
In the Pacific, Japan surrendered on August 15, after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Historians believe between 40 and 60 million people were killed in WWII, half of them civilians.
Ukraine, locked in a brutal conflict with pro-Moscow rebels, for the first time broke with Russia and marked May 8 as a “Day of Memory and Reconciliation”.
Germany marked its “liberation” from the Nazis in a joint session of parliament where speaker Norbert Lammert hailed the willingness of the country’s neighbors to forgive.
“Today we remember the millions of victims of an unprecedented annihilation campaign against other nations and peoples, against Slavs, against the Jews of Europe,” he said.
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