by David P. Rosenberg, M.P.A., Senior Reference Librarian – Collections, Center for Jewish History
In cities across Russia, Victory in Europe (V-E) parades are commemorating the 67th anniversary of the unconditional surrender of the armed forces of Nazi Germany. The event was also recently observed in the United Kingdom, France and Washington D.C., among other places.
Three months after the last German troops formally surrendered in Europe, the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Nearly a week later, the war finally ended with Victory in Japan (V-J) on August 15th.
One relevant digitized manuscript, “My Pre-American History 1921-1997” by Martin Ben-Ari, is held by the Leo Baeck Institute here at the Center. It contains recollections of an air raid during which Ben-Ari’s house was hit, the end of the war and V-E Day in London.
The YIVO library holds a monograph on the subject: The day the war ended : May 8, 1945–victory in Europe.
Victory in Europe came months after concentration camps were discovered by troops moving across Europe and the news of the Nazi atrocities became widespread. Click here for more information. The collections hold the vast majority of the works cited in that article as well as countless other works on the Holocaust and World War II. These include:
- GIs Remember: Liberating the Concentration Camps
- Inside the Vicious Heart: Americans and the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps
- End of the Holocaust: The Liberation of the Camps
- The Liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camps 1945: Eyewitness Accounts of the Liberators
- Liberation 1945