Today, Europe celebrates the 75th anniversary of V-E day, the official recognition of the Nazi’s surrender to Allied forces, in the shadow of a raging pandemic. In some countries, the climbing infection and death rates have been turned around. In others, the worst is yet to come. In 1945, even as Europe declared freedom from fascist oppression, fighting continued in the Pacific. Nonetheless, civilians gathered to express their joy in small-town streets and city squares. V-E Day rekindled a sense of hope in a war-ravaged world. Peace was still possible after all.
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt didn’t live to see V-E Day, having died of a brain hemorrhage just weeks beforehand. Even so, he had already envisioned the hard work that would be necessary beyond the end of the fighting. “The transition from war to peace should be carried forward rapidly,” he had declared in the fall of 1944. “This is the time to do planning, although the war, even in Europe, is not over.”
In her newspaper column “My Day” on May 8, 1945, Eleanor Roosevelt echoed her husband’s words when she wrote, “We will never have peace without friendship around the world. This is the time for a long look ahead. This is the time for us all to decide where we go from here.” For Eleanor, that meant promoting peace and prosperity among all nations, an endeavor that would result in the formation of the United Nations and the 1948 adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That document remains a touchstone of hope and faith in humanity throughout the world today.
Article 25 of the Declaration states, “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.” Sadly, many countries have yet to achieve this goal, a fact made all too clear by the current pandemic.
In a recent article, Indian author Arundhati Roy agonizes over the horrific situation in her home country while looking ahead to a post-pandemic world. Like the Roosevelts decades earlier, she sees the value in planning now in order to prepare for a better future. “Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew,” she writes. “This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”
Seventy-five years ago, citizens around the world cheered in joy and relief at the European prospects for peace. The echoes of their celebrations should inspire us to renew our own commitments to peace and unity today and to embrace the yet-unfulfilled ideal of a healthy and equitable post-pandemic world.
Peace at Last 