The day the war ended

Forty years ago, Europe
emerged from six years of dar-
kened hell into the light of vic-
tory. The Allied armies advanc-
ing on three fronts had choked
Hitler’s ‘‘Thousand Year
Reich” in their giant vise. On
April30, the Red Army’sflag was
hoisted atop the Reichstag; on
May 7, three nazi generals
walked into a red schoolhouse in
Reims, France and signed an
unconditional surrender. By
May 8 the word was official,

Andy Durovecz, a Ist Lieute-
nant in the British Secret Service,
found himself in Sienna, Italy, to
where he had just been evacuated
from liberated Hungary.

Two other officers and I were
stationed in an old castle outside
Sienna waiting for our evacuation
papers and transfers back to
England.
We didn’t actually get the news
— what we heard was all the
church bells ringing. We won-
ar dered what was happening, so we
a jumped into a jeep and scurried
into the city. By the time we got
there, it seemed like everybody

was crammed into the central

It was like being in a tin of sar-
dines. Since all three of us were in
British army uniform, we were
given celebrity treatment by the
Italian people and the Italian
partisans. They ran up to us,
shook our hands, and dragged us
into the pub to crack open bottle

CP leader Tim Buck

The Labor-Progressive (Com-
munist) Party greeted Victory
Day with this address by its
leader Tim Buck.

The historical moment for
which the democratic peoples
of the world have worked and
fought and died, has arrived at
last. The Canadian people
greet this day with joy and
pride in the splendid part our
armed forces have played in
bringing Victory — tempered
by grief for those who have
given their lives on the world’s
battlefronts. We must see to it
that they shall not have died in
vain.

Unitedly we have won the
first round of the battle for de-
mocracy and progress. Ger-
man fascism is no more. The
second round of the battle has
now to be won. We have to
deal with Hitler’s partner in
crime — Hirohito and Japa-
nese militarism. I am confident
that the labor movement,
which stood firm on the pro-
duction line in order to defeat
Hitlerism, will stand equally
united behind the nation’s ef-
fort so that Japanese militarism
can also be defeated and
destroyed.

people poured into the streets in
joyous celebration — It was
over! But before the cheering
quieted, the extent of the war’s
destruction began coming in
with a numbing taily. Europe
lay in ruins, 40 million were
dead, the stench of the con-
centration camps permeated the
air. “It is a nightmare beyond
imagination’, one wartime
correspondent wired home. But
World War II was no bad
dream. Fascism was a vermin

after bottle of wine. We sang Ital-
ian songs, some of them partisan
songs, and revolutionary songs
that we all knew, from the 1917
Russian revolution.

Everybody was singing and
celebrating and revelling in the
news.

* * *

Lil Tlomaki was in Toronto.

My memories of that specific
day are very vague — it was a long
time ago, and my son was just six
months old, so I didn’t get around
very much.

One thing, however, is etched
in my mind. Either the day after,
or shortly after, there was a head-
line in the Jewish Forward which
was the so-called socialist Jewish
paper in New York. It said “‘This
war is not over until the bombs
drop over Moscow’’. Although
those weren’t the exact words,
that was the exact meaning of
them.

lalready sensed at that time that
things were going to turn out dif-
ferently from what Victory really
signified, that things would move
in the direction which Churchill
later spelled out in his *‘Iron Cur-
tain’’ speech. That stuck very de-
finitely in my mind.

* * *

Murray Thomson served in the
tank corps of the Canadian army,
and was in Holland when victory
was broadcast.

The news came through our
unit, spread from soldier to sol-
dier. My first thought was “‘at last
it’s over’. I was billeted with
some Dutch people, a family, and
they were overjoyed. We had a bit
of a parade to celebrate the oc-
casion.

We.all knew the main reason
for victory. The Red Army saved
us. Like a fellow said the other
night on TV, ‘‘some of us vet-
erans wouldn’t be around today,
if it hadn’t been for the Red
Army.”

* * Ed

Val Bjarnason was a squadron
captain in the tank corps of the
Canadian army. His unit was fast
moving eastward through Ger-
many when the act of capitulation
was announced.

All our eyes were on the Red
Army’s storming of Berlin, so we
anticipated that victory would
come soon. We in the tanks were
moving quite fast through west-
ern Germany because the enemy
was fleeing. When the news came
over the radio, I was particularly
relieved. We had just liberated a
concentration camp, the first one
I had ever seen, and it was a hor-
rible, horrendous sight.

What a relief to have victory at
last. Everyone was relieved;
everyone was happy. All they
thought about was: ‘‘well now,
let’s head for home.”’

Everybody was watching Ber-
lin. As a Communist, I was thril-
led by the victory of the Red

10 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, MAY 15, 1985

which was spawned and en-
couraged by the militarists. No
sooner had the guns in Europe
fallen silent, when the pre-
parations for a new war began,
but this time with weapons far
more deadly. The arguments
which fueled fascism are
being voiced from today’s plat-
forms. May 8, and the inter-
vening 40 years have brought an
uneasy peace to the world, it isa
peace people have had to fight
for each and every day.

Army over the three-quarters of
the German forces which had
been pitted against it.

ee

Alice Maigis was a young girl in
Britain.

I was in Stranraer, near Robert
Burns country. We were totally
isolated — no newspaper, no ra-
dio. The news did come to us, of
course, but I don’t even remem-
ber how. But it really began to hit
us when the men started coming
back from the prisoner of war
camps, the concentration camps.
Then the stories began coming
out of how they were shell-
shocked, of how horribly they
were treated. Of course we felt
marvellous — but it was really
tragic, seeing those men. I still cry
when I think of it.

ee ee

Mel Doig was a gunner in the
field artillery of the Canadian
army.

Hitler’s “Thousand Year Reich” ends with a Soviet soldier hoisting his
flag over the Reichstag in Berline.

The actual announcement of
the end of the war was the cease-
fire, which for us came on May 5.
My outfit was still in the field, in
the area of Hamburg.

It was a glorious day, and I
happened to be on duty by my-
self, so there was nobody around
for the first few minutes. What I
thought was: this is the way to
bring in a real spring for the whole
world, because by that time all
Canadian soldiers had come to
understand that fascism, nazism,
was the chief threat. And it was a
sense of tremendous relief and

satisfaction that they were —
smashed to pieces.
Allofus in my outfit —and Iam —
sure this is true of the Canadian —
army generally — knew that the
nazi army had been smashed
finally and forever by the Red
Army in Berlin a few days earlier,
on April 29 and 30, May 1. I, and
several of those around mé,
clearly realized that the war ha¢_
been won, that fascism and its
military might had been smashed —
once and for all. So May 5 was 4

‘very joyous, joyful day for all of |

us.

This letter to the editor from Holland by Pvt.
Merwin (‘‘Binky’’) Marks appeared in the Cana-
dian Tribune on June 16, 1945. It was written
shortly after Canadian troops had liberated the coun-
try on May 5 of that year.

* * *

What a saga will be written from the true tales
of the people underground in Europe during the
war against fascism! Against the cunning brain
of the Gestapo with all its force, treachery and
cruelty, the people seemed helpless. Yet, with
the sheer strength of numbers and will power,
the people emerged victorious over the bar-
barian nazis, who could never grasp the values
the masses of other lands held precious.

By constant murder, plunder and terror the
nazis calculated to break the backs of the resis-
tance as they had so effectively and tragically
done within Germany itself. Yet despite the
deaths of hundreds and thousands of the bravest
in the unmentionable horrors of the concentra-
tion camps, the force of the people’s will grew.

In one little town in Holland alone, for nearly
four years, there were 40 homes that concealed
and saved 50 Jews, many of whom were actively
sought by the Gestapo. Also, close to a score of
Allied fliers who parachuted down in the vicinity
found haven in other homes. Most of them were
smuggled to the coast, but six were left in the
town when the Canucks arrived.

One home I visited gave refuge to a Jewish
woman and her 20-year-old daughter who the
day before had stepped outside the threshold for
the first time in over three years. The couple
who sheltered them were in their fifties, and the
most sedate pair imaginable. The man was a
semi-invalid and his wife a school teacher. Their
maid was the only other person who knew she
was a member of the underground. During that
evening friends’ dropped in, who it turned out
had sheltered an American flyer entirely un-
known to their best friends.

The Holland underground was composed of
all classes, despite the reprehensible minority of
Dutch collaborators. ‘‘The day you Canadians
came the tulips all opened’’ was one remark
which remains in my memory.*- . “

A soldier’s plea

Never forget, never forgive |

As for the collaborators, they are sweating it
out in hard labor, with youthful Dutch patriots
guarding them with Stens to see their work is
done. For those who are shocked at girls having
their hair clipped for their overt attention to the
nazi soldiers (schweinmadels, they are called),
they should see the thousands of tiny Dutch
homes whose families are waiting with fear,
hope and anxiety, wondering whether fathers,
brothers, sons will remain alive, liberated from

slave labor or the indescribable hell of Dachau, |}

Buchenwald and the other concentration
camps.

Last night by chance I was witness to one of
the happy reunions where the young son re-
turned home after more than two years forced
labor in Hamburg. His father was killed in
Dachau. Cold soup had been his steady diet. He
told me how the workers welcomed the Allied
air attacks in spite of the danger, for it meant
short periods of relief from labor. Like others I
have spoken to, he found many German work-

_

ers opposed to the Hitler regime.

The will of the German people to resist was
utterly demoralized and crushed so no effective
resistance was left. I have heard of German
soldiers who wore the hammer and sickle inside
their uniforms, but the German anti-fascists
never showed signs of real life.

So, those faint-hearted liberals who will now
emerge to plead for easy terms, let them re-
member the way a nazi thinks. If we do not
exterminate whole-sale the chief leaders of the

SS, nazis, Gestapo and German state, including.

the. professional business men and workers”
leaders who collaborated, we will sacrifice
many million more human lives in a very few
years.

There were over 1,500 collaborators in this
town of 20,000. There is still fertile ground in
Europe for the seeds of nazism if we do not bring
the entire fascist system and its perpetrators tO
the seat of stern justice. Revenge not for the
sake of blood-letting but as the only scientific
way to eradicate the pestilence which almost
engulfed the world. : :

—