The Allied victory in World War II 65 years ago was a "liberation for
all," even though it took many Germans some time to acknowledge that,
German parliament president Norbert Lammert said Friday.
It was only those who suffered directly from the Nazi terror who
realized immediately they had been freed, Lammert said in a tribute in
parliament to the end of the war in Europe on May 8, 1945 -- known as
Victory Europe Day.
"For many others it took a long time for the certainty to come through:
It was a day of liberation for all," said Lammert, a member of
Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union.
Nazi Germany surrendered to Allied forces on May 8, 1945, after six
years of war started by Adolf Hitler with an attack on Poland in
September 1939.
The Russian Embassy also commemorated the date in Berlin on Friday with
youth groups and veterans visiting the memorials to the Red Army
fighters in the center of the German capital. Thousands of Soviet
soldiers were killed in the final days of the war in the bitter fight
for Berlin.
Lammert said even after fighting ended, suffering did not. For some it
was only after the war that the suffering began because they were
prisoners of war, because they were displaced from their homes or
because they ended up in the East German dictatorship.
But the Germans born after the war can more easily discern cause and
consequence than the people at the time, he said
"This war was started by Germany, and it had horrific consequences even
in the homeland," he said.
While freedom was brought from the outside, Germans have now defended
it for 65 years in a stable democracy.
"On a day like this we feel strongly the responsibility that has been
transferred to us by history," Lammert said.
Germany was occupied and separated into four parts after the war. The
western sectors occupied by the United States, Britain and France
became the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, while the Soviet Sector
became the German Democratic Republic. The country was reunified in
1990.
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