May 9, 2005	Monday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 29, 1426

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BERLIN, May 8: Europe remembered the sacrifices underpinning the Allied victory over Nazi Germany 60 years ago, as Berlin said on Sunday that the memory of World War II – ‘the agony and its causes’ — should be kept alive. Under an overcast sky in the Netherlands, US President George Bush paid homage at a US military ceremony to the fallen and compared the fight against fascism then to the struggle for democracy today.

In London, Paris and elsewhere, leaders joined sombre ceremonies to honour the dead of the 1939-1945 war, history’s bloodiest conflict which claimed the lives of 40 to 60 million people. German President Horst Koehler said his country should never forget the horror unleashed by its Nazi leaders on its European neighbours, so that history should never be repeated.

“We have the responsibility to keep alive the memory of the agony and its causes, and we must ensure that it never returns. There is no closure,” he told a special session of parliament.

Tens of thousands of Germans joined ‘democracy day’ celebrations at Berlin’s historic Brandenburg Gate, but police cancelled a march planned by 3,000 neo-Nazis out of fear of clashes with 10,000 left-wing protesters gathered nearby. There were also reminders, notably in Poland and the Baltic states, that the fall of Nazi Germany also ushered in up to half a century of totalitarian Soviet rule over Eastern

Europe.

At a cemetery in the southern Dutch town of Margraten, where over 8,000 US soldiers lie buried, President Bush and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands laid a wreath, gunshots rang out in salute and a bugler played the plaintive Last Post.

“We recommend ourselves to the great truth that they defended, that freedom is the birthright of all mankind,” President Bush said in tribute.

Even today, the US president said, “Americans and Europeans are continuing to work together and bringing freedom to places where it has long been denied: In Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Lebanon and across the broader Middle East.”

In London, Prince Charles laid a wreath at the Cenotaph war memorial. Street parties and outdoor concerts took place in many parts of Britain, including a star-studded evening pop concert in Trafalgar Square.—AFP