On show are 60 archive pictures, many of which were never exhibited before. They are actually documents of the past, war years, victory jubilation and bitter losses. Ordinary man is the character of every photo motive.
The exhibition begins with two large pictures. One shows a small German boy amidst debris in Berlin. The other shows a session of the Nuremberg Tribunal. They symbolize the beginning and the end.
"It is to be remembered that May 8, 1945 was the day of liberation from national socialism and the day which made democratic development possible on the German soil", chairman of the Berlin Chamber of Deputies Walter Momper said at the official opening ceremony.
"The RIA Novosti photographs bring us back to the times when war returned to where it had originated", he said.
Momper thanked RIA Novosti for the "impressive pictures".
Russian ambassador to the FRG Vladimir Kotenev called "symbolical" the fact of holding the photo exhibition in the building of the Berlin parliament. "This parliament reinstated the first town major of Berlin, General Nikolai Berzarin, in the list of its honorary citizens. Berzarin won respect of the Berliners by actively engaging in what was necessary for returning life to peace immediately after the end of fighting in May 1945", Kotenev said.
In turn, deputy general director of RIA Novosti Leonid Burmistrov said: "All people in these photos have in common that the war and sorrow are over and the peaceful future lies open before them". "We selected not ostentatious themes but naked unseemly facts of those complicated days", Burmistrov said.
