V-E Day

A look at the commemoration ceremonies in Europe and the United States on Sunday marking the 60th anniversary of the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany.

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LONDON

World War II vets and hundreds of other spectators watched as Prince Charles laid a wreath of blood-red poppies before London's monument to the dead of both world wars. The ceremony at the Cenotaph memorial honored the 260,000 Britons who died fighting Nazi Germany and its allies -- mainly Japan and Italy. The heir to the throne, dressed in a naval uniform, later joined veterans and serving cavalrymen for a march through Hyde Park.

Queen Elizabeth II will lead national ceremonies on July 10, Britain's main day of commemoration.

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BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND

In the central England city of Birmingham, people brought food and drinks for a street party, evoking memories of the massive street celebrations that broke out across Britain on May 8, 1945, the day the Berlin armistice was signed. The Nazi capitulation was signed the day before in Reims, France, a week after Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. World War II continued in the Pacific until Japan's surrender on Aug. 15.

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NEW YORK

Holocaust survivors and their families gathered at Hunter College on Sunday to light candles in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II and the liberation of the Nazi death camps.

Friends and family members joined six Holocaust survivors as one by one they lit memorial candles. One of the survivors, Pauline Charaton, spent the war years in Austria, where she lived on a farm and pretended to be Catholic.

"I closed my eyes, and I saw my town that I came from," she said. "I saw my parents."

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MARGRATEN, THE NETHERLANDS

President Bush paid tribute Sunday to American lives lost in the 1939-1945 war at a cemetery in the Netherlands.

"On this day, we celebrate the victory they won and we recommit ourselves to the great truth that they defended: that freedom is the birthright of all of mankind," Bush said at Margraten, Europe's third-largest cemetery for America's war dead.

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MOSCOW

Gray-haired veterans rode on open military trucks down Moscow's main thoroughfare Sunday on their way to a dramatic recreation of the arrival of trains bearing victorious Soviet troops to the Byelorussky railway station, complete with a period locomotive.

Soldiers stomped alongside the trucks. Russians lined the street, holding flags and balloons, chanting "Thank you!" and shouting congratulations. Women in the parade wore traditional Russian costumes or war-era clothing.

Dozens of world leaders, including Bush, have been invited to today's 60th anniversary ceremonies in Moscow, prompting some of the strictest security measures Moscow has ever seen.

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AUSTRIA

At the former Mauthausen death camp in Austria, a ceremony honored some 100,000 inmates killed by the Nazis there. It was the last big Nazi death camp still operating when the U.S. Third Army's 11th Armored Division arrived in early May 1945.

About 6,000 of the camp's victims were Spaniards, enemies of fascist Spanish leader Gen. Francisco Franco. At the ceremony, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero paid tribute to them.

"As prime minister of the government of a democratic Spain, I want to pay homage, remember and express my admiration for all Spaniards who suffered in this concentration camp in its fight for freedom and dignity," Zapatero said.

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WARSAW

Poland's main Victory Day celebrations took place Saturday in the western city of Wroclaw. On Sunday, Prime Minister Marek Belka paid homage to soldiers who fought in WWII in a ceremony before Warsaw's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Belka also referred to today's ceremonies in Moscow. For Poles, the end of Nazi oppression marked the start of decades of often brutal Soviet rule.

"A ceremony in Moscow will pay homage to all soldiers of the anti-Hitler coalition," Belka said. "We want to believe that honest words of truth will be spoken there, about heroism during the war but also about betrayal and enslavement of the postwar years."

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BERLIN

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and German President Horst Koehler attended a cathedral service ahead of a wreath-laying ceremony at a memorial to victims of Nazism and war. Most Germans consider Hitler's defeat to have liberated them as well as the rest of Europe from the terrors of Nazism.

But about 3,000 extreme-right supporters rallied to protest the "cult of guilt" they say was imposed on the nation after Germany's surrender.

A protest march planned by the group was scrapped when thousands of counter-demonstrators blocked the route.

In an article to run in the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda today, Schroeder apologized to Russia for suffering inflicted by Germans during World War II and asked Moscow for forgiveness.

"No other country had to pay the victory over Hitler's Germany as dearly as the then Soviet Union," Schroeder wrote.

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PARIS

At the Arc de Triomphe, French President Jacques Chirac relit the flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, watched by troops from the many nations that united to crush Hitler. They included Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, the Czech Republic, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Russia, Slovakia and the United States.

Jets flew over the graceful tree-lined Avenue des Champs-Elysees, streaking the sky with red, white and blue smoke -- the colors of the French flag.

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PRAGUE

In the Czech capital, tens of thousands of Czechs as well WWII veterans from several countries and President Vaclav Klaus watched a military parade. Most of former Czechoslovakia, including Prague, was liberated from Nazi occupation by the Soviet army. American troops led by Gen. George S. Patton freed the western part of the country.