Paris remembers liberation from Nazis

The bells of Notre Dame rang out today on the 60th anniversary of General Charles de Gaulle’s emotional march from the Arc de Triomphe to the cathedral in the city’s heart, closing a week of ceremonies to mark Paris’s liberation from the Nazis.

A non-denominational mass honoured the fallen soldiers of France’s 2nd Armoured Division, the first Allied troops to enter the city on August 25, 1944.

In front of the cathedral’s twin Gothic towers, soldiers in tall feathered caps read the names of the young men who died.

The old men who survived stood by silently, many wearing their decades-old military caps and medals. President Jacques Chirac attended, as did French representatives for Muslims, Jews and Protestants.

The archbishop of Paris – a Jew who converted to Roman Catholicism as a teenager and lost his mother to Auschwitz – recalled the city’s four dark years of occupation.

“We paid a heavy price in suffering, humiliation and destroyed morale,” Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger said. “But the joy of freedom and restored honour were even greater.”

The tolling of Notre Dame’s bells was a symbol of Paris’ rebirth 60 years ago. During the occupation, the city’s church bells had been silenced. With the liberation, they chimed out over the rooftops.

A day after the first Allied troops entered Paris, de Gaulle marched down the Champs-Elysees Avenue and was acclaimed by Parisians who filled the streets and dangled from windows.

Chirac honoured the general today by placing a bouquet at the foot of his statue on the Champs-Elysées.

In a symbol of healing since the war, Cardinal Georg Sterzinsky, the archbishop of Berlin, read part of the Mass in German. The archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, and the Archbishop of Westminster in Britain, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, also attended.