World War 2's painful lessons cannot be forgotten or unlearnt

It is a duty to teach today's children as well as future generations about the most destructive war in the history of humankind, so that the crimes of the ancestors will not be repeated again.

- Andreas Peschke

Eighty years ago, on 8 May 1945, Nazi Germany capitulated unconditionally to the Allied forces. Soviet soldiers hoisted their flag over the destroyed building of the German parliament in Berlin.

World War 2 in Europe was over. It was the most destructive war in the history of humankind. More than 50 million people lost their lives. Wide stretches of Europe became wastelands. German cities lay in ashes. The war had come back to the nation whose criminal leadership had started it.

Nazi German aggressors fought this war with unimaginable cruelty. In the course of it, they perpetrated countless numbers of the most terrible atrocities and war crimes in the countries they attacked and occupied.

They also committed the Holocaust, the systematic mass murder of six million Jews in Europe.

I was born 24 years after the war ended. Most Germans today are born one, two or three generations after the war. Unfortunately, we cannot change history. But we must draw the right lessons.

It is our duty not to forget. It is our duty to take responsibility. And it is our duty to do what we can so that the crimes of our ancestors will never be perpetrated again.

For the Allied forces, the German capitulation on 8 May 1945 (9 May Moscow time, which is why the Russians mark it a day later) was Victory Day.