Berlin police ban Soviet symbols on liberation anniversary

Exactly 80 years after Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender, Berlin police banned Soviet symbols during Victory Day commemorations.

Visitors rushing to the Second World War memorials in the city were prevented from wearing St. George ribbons and using Belarusian and Russian flags and banners, as well as the USSR flag.

On the other hand, according to Nico Popp, who wrote an impression piece for Junge Welt, on May 8, “smiling figures tried to provoke visitors at the Soviet memorials in Berlin with NATO flags.”

A reporter for Berliner Zeitung also reported that some groups with Ukrainian flags gathered around the Soviet memorials.

Furthermore, Berlin police also banned the distribution of the Junge Welt newspaper at the Soviet Memorial in Berlin because its May 8 cover featured a Soviet flag.

The police justified this decision with a general order prohibiting the display of Soviet flags and symbols around the capital’s three Soviet Memorials on May 8 and 9.

On the front page of the Junge Welt newspaper regarding the 80th anniversary of the liberation from fascism, under the headline “Hitler kaputt” (Hitler is finished), a red banner with hammer and sickle symbols is placed behind a photograph of people celebrating the end of the war in Moscow.

Junge Welt editor-in-chief Nick Brauns criticized the police’s general decision to ban Soviet symbols that defeated Nazi fascism, and their use of this decision to keep Junge Welt away from the Soviet Memorial in Treptow, calling it “censorship and an attack on press freedom.”

Brauns continued:

“As a Marxist and anti-fascist daily newspaper, Junge Welt is committed to historical truth. By publishing the red flag with hammer and sickle symbols on the cover of our May 8 issue, we honor the decisive role of the Red Army in Germany’s liberation from fascism. The police’s prohibition of displaying the symbols of the Soviet liberators at the Soviet memorials on May 8 and 9 appears to be an attempt to rewrite history.”

Members of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) who visited the Soviet Memorial in Treptow were also reportedly prevented from entering because of their hammer and sickle flags.

Meanwhile, May 8 was declared a public holiday in Berlin this year to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe and the liberation from Nazi fascism. Thousands of people used this holiday to visit the Soviet memorials in Treptower Park, Tiergarten, and Schönholzer Heide. Tens of thousands of Red Army soldiers who lost their lives in the Battle of Berlin during the final weeks of the war are buried here.

A commemoration ceremony was also held in the Federal Parliament (Bundestag), to which Belarusian and Russian representatives were not invited. Speeches were given by Federal Parliament President Julia Klöckner (CDU) and Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD).

According to Popp from Junge Welt, a common feature of both speeches was the almost undisguised desire to use the date May 8, 1945 – or rather, an interpretation of this date serving the current political agenda.

Klöckner claimed that Moscow was “abusing history” by trying to justify the war in Ukraine by citing the war against Nazi Germany.

Arguing that “Red Army soldiers did not only come from Russia,” Klöckner said, “We must be able to defend peace and freedom militarily ourselves.”

Steinmeier went a step further, accusing the Soviet Union of paving the way for “a new dictatorship” in East Germany. The Federal President guaranteed that May 8, 1945, was a day of liberation and is today “at the core of all German identity”; he thanked the “Americans, British, and French” for the liberation and said they also acknowledged the “contribution” of the Red Army.

The President stated, “Precisely for this reason, we resolutely oppose the Kremlin’s current historical lies. Even if this claim is repeated at the victory celebrations in Moscow tomorrow: the war against Ukraine is not a continuation of the struggle against fascism.”

On the other hand, as Arnold Schölzel from Junge Welt also recalled, it was Steinmeier who, as foreign minister in 2014, initiated the regime change in Kyiv together with fascist groups in Maidan, where his predecessor Guido Westerwelle did not want to be photographed.