WWII recalled from a distance
Europe marks conflict’s end
PARIS — European nations commemorated the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II on the continent in novel ways Friday, with ceremonies and public events on hold.
There were no poignant handshakes with veterans. Military parades were canceled. Wreaths were laid, but with appropriate social distancing.
In the U.S., seven World War II veterans, ages 96 to 100, joined President Donald Trump at a wreath-laying ceremony Friday. The veterans had hoped to mark the occasion in Moscow, but that idea was dashed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Citizens were encouraged to mark the day — a national holiday in some places — at home. Closeness may have marked previous commemorations, but distance, masks and hand sanitizers played a part in the celebrations this year.
Seventy-five years ago in Berlin, German military officials signed the instrument of surrender, ending nearly six years of conflict
in Europe that saw hundreds of millions of people face occupation, forced displacement and persecution. The war continued in Asia for a few more months.
Estimates vary, but at least 70 million people died globally in the war, an overwhelming majority of them civilians. Among them were the 6 million Jews and millions of others killed systematically by the Nazi regime, many of them in concentration camps across Europe.
On May 8, 1945, tens of thousands of people filled the streets of Britain, France and other victorious European countries. For others in Poland, the Baltic states and countries of Eastern Europe, the date marked the beginning of another period of domination, this time by the Soviet Union.
At a wreath-laying commemoration Friday at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw, Poland, President Andrzej Duda described the day as a “bittersweet anniversary.”
Duda lamented the fact that thousands of Polish troops who had fought alongside Allied forces were not allowed to march in the 1946 Victory Parade in London for fear of straining British relations with Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
World War II began on Sept. 1, 1939, when Adolf Hitler’s Nazi forces invaded Poland.
On Friday, the places that once broke out in joy, like the Avenue des Champs-Elysees in Paris or Trafalgar Square in London, remained mostly empty. The World War II veterans who are thanked by leaders every May 8 in emotional moments broadcast on national television were forced to stay home.
U.K. OBSERVANCES
In Britain, the national moment of remembrance included the jets of the British air force’s Red Arrows flying over Buckingham Palace in London. People paused for a two-minute silence, and at home they were invited to stand and raise their glasses in a toast as the BBC broadcast a speech from Winston Churchill, the wartime prime minister.
A speech from Queen Elizabeth II was broadcast at 9 p.m., exactly 75 years after her father, George VI, addressed the nation at the same hour.
Among the heroes that Britain celebrated was Capt. Tom Moore, 100, who served in India and Burma during World War II, and who last month helped raise about $37 million for the country’s National Health Service.
Up and down the U.K., people have gotten into the spirit of VE Day, which for this year has been designated as a public holiday.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who lit a candle Thursday evening by the grave of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey in remembrance of those who gave their lives, wrote to veterans, describing them as “the greatest generation of Britons who ever lived.”
Prince Charles and his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall,
led the country in a two-minute silence at the war memorial on the grounds of Balmoral Castle in Scotland. Charles laid a wreath of poppies on behalf of the nation. At the U.K.’s main memorial on Whitehall in central London, traffic ground to a halt as people observed the silence.
The official death toll of the coronavirus in Britain is now more than 30,000, higher than that of any other country in Europe.
ELSEWHERE IN EUROPE
In France, President Emmanuel Macron oversaw commemorative ceremonies in Paris, without the crowds that usually gather to watch and without the
French leader’s traditional walk up the Champs-Elysees to review troops.
The handful of participants — ministers, politicians and military officials — stood far apart as the national anthem rang out underneath the Arc de Triomphe, where Macron laid a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier. After writing some words of tribute, Macron sanitized his hands.
Macron also laid a wreath at the statue of one of his predecessors, Charles de Gaulle, the general revered for leading the French Resistance from London after France had fallen in 1940.
The president urged people to display flags on their balconies to honor the resistance fighters and the Free France forces.
Macron had been scheduled to attend a victory parade in Moscow today, but Russian authorities canceled the event.
In Germany, a full state ceremony was canceled, but Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier laid a wreath in memory of the victims of war and tyranny. “There is no end to remembering,” Steinmeier said at the Neue Wache memorial in Berlin. “There is no redemption from our history.”
Berlin itself, for the first time, declared May 8 a holiday. While Friday was a normal workday in the rest of the country, there has been a push to make the day a national holiday. This year, Esther Bejarano, a concentration camp survivor and the head of the International Auschwitz Committee, a group of survivors, wrote an open letter to Steinmeier and Merkel pressing that case.
A May 8 holiday would be “an opportunity to reflect on the great hopes of humanity: freedom, equality, fraternity — and sisterhood,” she wrote. Online, her petition has gathered more than 100,000 signatures.
The day has also taken on new meaning as the continent faces the coronavirus crisis. On the ruins of Europe’s bloodiest modern conflict were laid the foundations of the European Union, which now faces its worst recession.
Some leaders have equated the struggle to contain the coronavirus to a war and have drawn parallels between the conflict that changed the fate of hundreds of millions and the pandemic that has so far killed more than 274,000 worldwide.
Many saw parallels between the two eras, as Europe prepares for the prospect of deep turmoil.
SEEKING SOLIDARITY
Johnson, who was hospitalized for weeks after contracting the virus, said his country is now engaged in a struggle that “demanded the same spirit of national endeavor.”
“We can’t hold the parades and street celebrations we enjoyed in the past, but all of us who were born since 1945 are acutely conscious that we owe everything we most value to the generation who won the Second World War,” he said.
But as officials celebrated those who saved Europe 75 years ago, historians said that today’s leaders will be judged for their response to the current pandemic.
“We might forgive our leaders’ frequent and self-serving language of war and their invocation of Churchill in 1940 if only it is accompanied by some of that wartime spirit that reset and expanded the boundaries of the possible,” Canadian historian and Oxford University professor Margaret MacMillan wrote.
At the wreath-laying ceremony in Berlin, Steinmeier called for more unity across the European Union, arguing that the spirit of solidarity that helped defeat Nazi Germany is now needed to tackle the coronavirus pandemic. In recent days, various political figures across Europe have warned that the bloc would not survive the challenges posed by the coronavirus if the member countries did not address it together.
“The corona pandemic is forcing us to commemorate alone — apart from those who are important to us and to whom we are grateful,” Steinmeier said. He recalled that on May 8, 1945, “the Germans were really alone,” militarily defeated, economically devastated and “morally ruined.”
“We had made an enemy of the whole world,” he said in a nationally televised address, adding that 75 years later, “we are not alone.”
“For us Germans, ‘never again’ means ‘never again alone,’” Steinmeier said at the ceremony. “If we don’t hold Europe together, including during and after this pandemic, then we are not living up to May 8.”
U.S. CEREMONY
In Washington, Trump arrived at the World War II Memorial on a blustery Friday morning accompanied by first lady Melania Trump. They participated in the wreath-laying and toured the memorial, stopping briefly in front of a wall etched with the phrase: “Here we mark the price of freedom.”
White House officials described the veterans as “choosing nation over self” by joining Trump at the ceremony.
“These heroes are living testaments to the American spirit of perseverance and victory, especially in the midst of dark days,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said.
Among the veterans who joined Trump was Gregory Melikian, 97, of Phoenix, who decades ago sent the coded message to the world that the Germans had unconditionally surrendered.
Others at the ceremony included participants in the D-Day invasion that turned the tide in the war: Steven Melnikoff, 100, of Cockeysville, Md.; Guy Whidden, 97, of Braddock Heights, Md.; and Harold Angle, 97, of Chambersburg, Pa.
Donald Halverson, 97, of Minnesota fought in some of the war’s fiercest fighting in Italy. John Coates, 96, of Maryland fought in the Battle of the Bulge. Jack Myers, 97, of Hagerstown, Md., was part of a unit that liberated the Dachau concentration camp.
Timothy Davis, director of the Greatest Generations Foundation, which helps veterans return to the countries where they fought, said the U.S. soldiers were originally scheduled to travel to Moscow. He said that with international travel out of the question during the pandemic, the veterans talked to him about trying to commemorate the day in Washington.
“Of course, we presented to them the risk we are facing,” Davis said. “They said, ‘It doesn’t matter, Tim,’” and asked him to press ahead, saying they viewed the commemoration as “a blessing to all who fought, died and served in World War II.”