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ByGregKeller The Associated Press PARIS With quiet mo- ments of memory or mili- tary pomp, leaders and or- dinary citizens across Eu- rope are marking 70 years since the Nazi defeat and the end of a war that rav- aged the continent. But the East-West alliance that vanquished Hitler is deeply divided today. Russia is celebrating Soviet wartime feats in a ceremony Saturday that is causing diplomatic ten- sions because of the coun- try's role in Ukraine's con- flict. Poland has held a ceremony meant as an al- ternative to Moscow's. Paris' mile-long Champs Elysees was closed to traf- fic to make way for a pro- cession of official motor- cades and mounted mili- tary escorts that ascended the wide boulevard from the Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe, site of France's Tomb of the Un- known Soldier. "The victory of May 8th wasn't the supremacy, the domination, of one nation over another. It was the vic- tory of an ideal over a total- itarian ideology," President Francois Hollande said in a speech before arriving at the giant stone arch. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the U.S. ambassador to France joined French Foreign Min- ister Laurent Fabius to lay a wreath at the tomb, in a sign of appreciation for the American role in liberating France from German occu- pation. Photos taken 70 years ago show massive crowds of Parisians filling the Champs Elysees to cele- brate the Nazi surrender, after nearly five years of occupation. May 8 is now a public holiday in France, but relatively few people turned out on the Champs Elysees Friday for the offi- cial ceremony. Reims, the capital of France's champagne wine region where the German surrender was signed, was organizing four days of events to mark the anni- versary. The German capitula- tion was announced to the world later that day by an Associated Press reporter who defied military cen- sors to get the story out a full day ahead of the com- petition — an act for which he was reprimanded and fired. Decades later the news agency apologized for how it treated the re- porter, Edward Kennedy, and said he had done the right thing. In Caen, the Normandy town liberated and largely destroyed during the D- Day invasion nearly a year before the surrender, a "Victory Ball" was being held with a big-band play- ing swing tunes. Other ceremonies took place around Europe, in- cluding in Poland, where President Bronislaw Ko- morowski was joined by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon and the pres- idents of Ukraine and sev- eral Central European countries for a ceremony at the site where some of the first shots were fired by Germany against Po- land at the start of the war on Sept. 1, 1939. In Germany, top officials gathered at Berlin's Reich- stag parliament build- ing for an hour-long com- memoration of the end of the war in Europe. WWII MEMORIAL Europemarks70yearssince Nazi defeat, end of epochal war By Kirsten Grieshaber The Associated Press BERLIN When Paul Schmitz was a little boy, he never understood why kids in his tiny German village taunted him as a "Yank" and beat him up. He was a teenager by the time he found out: His fa- ther was an American sol- dier his mother had a ro- mance with in the final days of World War II. Schmitz was born about five months after Victory in Europe Day, when the Al- lied forces defeated Nazi Germany 70 years ago Fri- day. It would be the start of a life as an outsider, burdened by fear, discrim- ination and loneliness. He is one of at least 250,000 children of German moth- ers who got pregnant by Allied soldiers from the United States, Great Brit- ain, France or the Soviet Union as the Third Reich crumbled. Now many of those chil- dren have embarked on quests to find their fathers. "I was a child of shame, a child of the enemy, even though it was the Ameri- cans who liberated us," says Schmitz, a shy 69-year-old with a friendly round face. "All my life I had a yearn- ing for my father, but un- til recently I was too afraid to actively search for him." Schmitz decided to start looking for his dad 10 years ago, among hundreds, per- haps thousands, of Ger- mans who have launched searches for their Allied soldier fathers in recent years. The search is often pain- ful, but can also bring clo- sure and answer nagging questions about identity and heritage. As the gen- eration of children born at the end of the war has reached retirement age, and their kids grown up, they have organized self- help groups and used In- ternet research tools to solve the mystery of their unknown fathers. "Almost all war children start their search alone, spending nights in front of the computer," said Ute Baur-Timmerbrink, who found out in her 50s that she was the daughter of an American officer. She is now part of the group GI Trace that helps other war children look for their dads — quests that succeed about half of the time. She has helped dozens of war children, and still gets up to 10 requests for assis- tance a week. Many of the aging war children feel they have one last chance to discover the truth. "After seven decades, these people are at a stage of their lives where they ask these questions: Who am I, where do I come from, what are my roots?" said Silke Satjukow, a his- torian who wrote a book about the war children. "Of course, they know that their fathers will most likely be dead by now, but they're still hoping to find 'shadow families,' siblings who were born after their fathers left Germany." Schmitz talks haltingly about his difficult life as a fatherless boy in post-war Germany. His eyes well up recalling the hardships he faced in a conservative ru- ral area close to the Bel- gian border. It took him years to fig- ure out — in his village of Kalterherberg — that he was just about the only one who didn't know he was a "war baby." When he was around 14, he asked his mother why he didn't have a father; she tersely revealed the truth. A few years later, she told him that his father's name was John — but otherwise did not talk about him. Most kids in Schmitz's situation felt unwanted: The mothers were ashamed and the U.S. military forces did not want to have any- thing to do with them, say- ing it was a private matter. The fathers themselves of- ten started new families back home without imag- ining they might have a child on the other side of the Atlantic. For Schmitz, it was only after his mother had died, and his own children had grown up, that he found the courage to look for his American father. PARENTAL SEARCH 70 y ea rs a e r WW II , Ge rm an war kids look for soldier dads COURTESYOFKLAUSSCHMITZVIAAP This undated photo provided by Klaus Schmitz, a son of a United States WWII soldier, shows him as a little boy with his mother, right, and aunts. Schmitz talked to The Associated Press about his father and his life in post WWII Germany. MARKUS SCHREIBER — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Ute Baur-Timmerbrink, daughter of an United States WWII soldier, talks to the Associated Press during an interview at the exhibition "1945Defeat. Libaration. New Beginning." at the German Historic Museum in Berlin. RE MY D E L A M AU VI NI ER E — TH E A SS OC IA TE D P RE SS Fr enc h P re sid en t F ra nco is Ho ll an de sh ak es h an d w it h Au st ra lia n v et er an s d ur in g a c eremon y a t t he A rc d e Tr io mp he ma rk in g t he 7 0t h a nn iv er sa ry o f t he e nd o f Wo rl d W ar I I, i n P ar i s o n F ri da y. By Danica Kirka and Jill Lawless The Associated Press LONDON After years of sharing power, David Cameron pulled off an unexpected election tri- umph that gave the Con- servative prime minis- ter a second term with an outright majority Fri- day and dealt a stinging defeat to his three main rivals. Standing before the glistening black door of 10 Downing Street, Cam- eron pledged to govern as the party of "one nation, one United Kingdom." But he faces a fractured Britain — divided by rich and poor, by separatist gains in Scotland and by doubts over its place in the European Union. The election ushers in a new era in British pol- itics, with veteran law- makers ousted by a pub- lic that made clear it had lost trust in its politi- cal leaders. The victors included a 20-year-old Scottish nationalist who beat out a senior Labour Party leader in Scotland. It was also unexpected. Polls had predicted a dead heat — a result that would have meant days of haggling to form a new government. Queen Eliz- abeth II was out of town at her castle in Windsor, and needed to rush back to London for the tradi- tional meeting at Buck- ingham Palace in which the victor offers to form a government. OUTRIGHT MAJORITY Un ex pe ct ed t ri um ph m ea ns Cameron can govern UK on his own Landscape/Fence Steve's Tractor &LandscapeService •FenceBuilding•Landscaping • Trenching • Rototilling • Disking • Mowing • Ridging • Post Hole Digging • Blade Work • Sprinkler Installation • Concrete Work Cont. 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