On May 9th I was going for a walk in downtown Vienna, finally wound up on Karlsplatz, when quite late in the afternoon I decided to go a bit further to Schwarzenbergplatz, to get a few more pictures. The album from that walk is on Flickr: VIENNA WALK May 9th 2024 (there are still more to upload, at the moment there are 50 images).
Unbeknown to me there was a large gathering. When I got closer I found that these were Russians, congregating in front of the Russian War Memorial. There was singing and speeches, flags being waved and people dressed in traditional costumes. May 9th was Ascention Day, a Holiday in Austria. The 'official day' WW2 ended was May 8th 1945.
It was in fact the Russian Forces that drove the Nazis out of Vienna and freed the city.
There were no signs that I could read, it was all cyrillic, flags and some portraits on display that seemed to be memories of fallen soldiers, possibly relatives of the people in attendance.
In that crowd, one gentleman stood out, so I asked if I can take his picture. He posed with his wife for me:
Die letzte Hauptkampflinie
English:
On May 8, 1945 - 75 years ago - the Second World War in Europe came to an end. In Austria's collective memory, it is currently the most formative military conflict. Countless books, scientific papers and articles have been written about this time and thousands of documentaries have been produced that cover almost every aspect. However, despite this large number of publications, there are still areas that have not yet been dealt with very much.
I translated this with Google - perhaps you could enter the link of this article into the Google Translator to learn more about the history.
When I was a child (born five months before the war ended) I can remember the post-war times, living in Favoriten, the tenth district of Vienna, under Russian occupation until 1955. Like Berlin, Vienna was divided into four zones. To travel between zones (Russian, American, British and French), you needed your identity card to cross the check points.
Allied-occupied Austria
Visit my website
▼
PRINTS OF MY ARTWORK AVAILABLE HERE:
Bonus Special: The song I mentioned above: KALINKA
should you not be on the blockchain, or have no upvote power, or this post is already older than 7 days, you can always just buy me a coffee.