Why 9 May Still Matters: Witnesses, Archives and the Memory of 1945

From letters written at the front to family photographs carried through the streets, the legacy of the Second World War lives on in personal memories. As the generation that witnessed the conflict disappears, preserving their stories becomes a shared responsibility across nations, including India and Russia.

Beyond the parade

Every 9 May, Russia and several other countries commemorate Victory Day, marking the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in the Great Patriotic War, the Eastern Front of the Second World War. In Russia, the day brings together military ceremonies, flowers at memorials, family photographs and the Immortal Regiment procession, in which people carry portraits of relatives who fought, served or endured the war.

Yet the meaning of 9 May extends far beyond military parades and public ceremonies. It lives in a handwritten letter preserved in a family cupboard, a medal passed from one generation to another, a photograph with a name written on its reverse, or a story a grandparent shared only once.

These fragments of family history connect the present to one of the most devastating periods in human history. They remind us that the Second World War was not merely a contest between armies and states. It was a human catastrophe that reshaped families, destroyed communities, displaced millions and left scars across continents.

As the number of surviving witnesses declines, a crucial question emerges: how will future generations remember 1945 when they can no longer hear directly from those who experienced it?

The answer lies in preserving testimony, opening and protecting historical archives, strengthening responsible historical research, and encouraging young people to engage with the past. Victory Day remains significant not simply because it commemorates a military outcome, but because it creates an opportunity to reflect on the human cost of war and the enduring responsibility to safeguard peace.

1. Why 9 May became a defining date

The significance of 9 May is rooted in the final days of Nazi Germany. The German armed forces signed an unconditional surrender in the Berlin suburb of Karlshorst on the night of 8 May 1945, which was already 9 May in Moscow. The Soviet Union subsequently designated 9 May as Victory Day. In Western Europe and the United States, Victory in Europe Day is generally commemorated on 8 May, reflecting the time difference and the surrender arrangements. Both dates commemorate the defeat of Nazi Germany, although their historical traditions and public observances differ.

For the Soviet Union, victory carried an immense human cost. The war on the Eastern Front involved some of the largest and most destructive military campaigns in history. Soviet soldiers and civilians endured prolonged sieges, occupation, mass executions, forced displacement and widespread destruction. The Soviet Union suffered extraordinary losses, and the consequences reached virtually every part of society.

The victory was also an Allied achievement. The Soviet Union’s decisive role on the Eastern Front formed one essential part of a broader struggle involving Britain, the United States, China, resistance movements and forces from numerous other countries. Their contributions differed in scale, geography and nature, but the defeat of Nazi Germany emerged from a wider coalition against the Axis powers.

Remembering 9 May responsibly requires holding these truths together. It means recognising the sacrifice of Soviet citizens without overlooking the contributions of other Allied forces. It also means understanding the victory in the context of the crimes of Nazi Germany, including the Holocaust, and the suffering inflicted on civilian populations.

For many Russian families, the date is not an abstract historical anniversary. It is a moment to remember a grandfather who never returned, a grandmother who survived the siege of Leningrad, or relatives who spent years rebuilding a destroyed home.

The public ceremony gives collective expression to these private histories. Its emotional force comes from the knowledge that the consequences of the war did not end with the surrender.

2. Family archives: Where history becomes personal

Official histories explain military operations, political decisions and the movement of armies. Family archives reveal what these events meant to the people who lived through them.

A soldier’s letter might describe the weather, ask after a child’s health or request a photograph from home. A diary may record food shortages, fear, exhaustion or the uncertainty of waiting for news. A photograph may show a young man in uniform before his departure, with no indication of whether he returned.

The Imperial War Museums in Britain has documented wartime correspondence and personal papers as part of its collections. Its broader archival work illustrates how ordinary documents can help historians reconstruct the everyday realities of war. A 2025 commemorative initiative, Letters to Loved Ones, collected more than 450 letters, postcards and photographs from families connected to the Second World War generation.

The importance of such projects extends beyond any single museum. Families do not need to surrender original documents to preserve their historical value. High-quality scans, photographs, transcriptions and carefully recorded interviews can help make personal collections accessible while keeping irreplaceable objects in family hands.

Nevertheless, preservation requires more than uploading a photograph. Names must be recorded accurately, dates checked, locations identified and the source of each document documented. A letter without its sender’s name or historical context can lose much of its value. An incorrectly identified photograph can mislead future researchers.

Family archives therefore deserve both emotional respect and scholarly care.

3. The race against time: Preserving the voices of witnesses

The generation that directly experienced the Second World War is now almost entirely gone. Those who served as young adults in 1945 would be close to or over a century old in 2026. Survivors of the Holocaust, siege survivors, former prisoners of war, nurses, factory workers and civilians who lived through occupation have also become increasingly scarce.

Their disappearance creates a profound challenge for historians.

Written records are indispensable, but they cannot always explain the emotional and social realities behind an event. An official document may record that a town was evacuated. A witness can describe the hurried packing, the relatives left behind, the crowded transport and the uncertainty of ever returning.

Oral history helps recover those dimensions of experience.

Researchers, museums, universities and community organisations can record interviews with surviving witnesses and their descendants. These conversations can preserve details about daily life, family separation, wartime work, displacement and post-war reconstruction that official records may not fully capture.

But testimony must be treated with care. Human memory is not a flawless recording device. Recollections can change over time, dates can become confused and later knowledge can influence how earlier events are remembered. Trauma may also make some experiences difficult to discuss.

These limitations do not diminish the importance of testimony. They make responsible documentation more essential.

A strong oral-history project records the interview date, the narrator’s identity with appropriate consent, the circumstances of the account and any available corroborating sources. It distinguishes what a witness personally experienced from what they learned later from relatives or books.

The objective is not to force every memory into agreement with an official narrative. It is to preserve testimony faithfully and assess it alongside other evidence.

The loss of a witness should not mean the loss of their story. With consent and proper documentation, their voice can remain available to future generations long after the original conversation has ended.

4. Digital archives: Technology as a bridge between generations

The preservation of wartime memory has entered a new era. Digitisation allows documents that once remained in private cupboards or restricted reading rooms to reach students, researchers and families across national borders.

A fragile letter can be scanned before its ink fades. A faded photograph can be catalogued and compared with other images. A recorded interview can be transcribed, translated and made searchable. Military records can be connected with maps, unit histories and casualty databases.

These developments are particularly important for younger generations who may have no direct connection to the war.

Digital archives can help a student in India investigate the service of an Indian soldier in Burma, while a researcher in Russia examines a Soviet unit’s wartime movements. A descendant living thousands of kilometres from their ancestral village can search historical databases for a relative’s name.

The United States National Archives, for example, provides research resources for military history, including Second World War records and collections relating to wartime service. Imperial War Museums also maintains an extensive online catalogue of collection records. Such resources demonstrate how archival institutions can connect individual histories with wider historical evidence.

However, digitisation must not be mistaken for complete preservation.

A scanned document is useful only if it remains accessible, correctly identified and protected against data loss. Archives need reliable storage, backup systems, clear permissions and long-term plans for maintaining digital files. Historical records also require context: a photograph circulated without a date or reliable caption can spread misinformation as easily as it can preserve memory.

Artificial intelligence can assist with handwriting recognition, transcription, translation and the identification of possible matches across large collections. Yet machine-generated transcriptions and translations must be checked, especially when dealing with names, military terminology, historical place names and sensitive testimony.

There is also an ethical question. Personal letters and family photographs were often created for private audiences, not unrestricted public distribution. Digitisation should therefore respect privacy, family wishes, copyright and the dignity of people represented in the records.

The aim should be to make history more accessible without turning human suffering into disposable online content.

5. The Immortal Regiment: When family memory enters public life

Participants carry portraits of relatives who served in the war, bringing family histories into public spaces. The effect is distinctive: instead of remembering only famous commanders or prominent political leaders, participants place ordinary people at the centre of commemoration.

A face held above a crowd can represent a life that would otherwise be known only to relatives. It may belong to an infantryman, a nurse, a military doctor, a partisan, a prisoner of war or a civilian whose experiences shaped the family for generations.

The procession connects two forms of remembrance. The public event creates a collective ritual, while the portrait carries an intimate, personal meaning.

For descendants, preparing to participate can become an act of historical discovery. They may search for service records, ask elderly relatives questions, restore old photographs or learn where a family member fought. The commemorative day then becomes the culmination of research that began at home.

At the same time, public remembrance takes place within broader political and social contexts. Different societies interpret the Second World War through their own national experiences, and commemorative traditions can change over time. A thoughtful approach should recognise these differences rather than assume that all participants understand the past in exactly the same way.

The enduring value of family remembrance lies in its ability to restore individual lives to a history often told through numbers and military formations.

A portrait cannot explain an entire war. But it can encourage someone to ask the questions that lead to a deeper understanding of it.

6. India and the Second World War: A contribution that deserves renewed attention

India’s connection with the Second World War is an essential part of this global history. Its soldiers served across multiple theatres of war, including North Africa, the Middle East, Italy and Southeast Asia. Indian forces also played a major role in the campaigns in Burma and the defence of India’s eastern frontier.

The scale of participation is significant.

The figure of approximately 2.58 million refers to men who volunteered for service in the Indian armed forces during the war, as summarised in a review of the official history India and the War. It should not be confused with the number who died, nor treated as a count of combatants alone. The broader military contribution included numerous services, support functions and operational roles.

These men came from different regions, linguistic communities and social backgrounds. Their experiences varied considerably. Some fought in intense campaigns, others served in logistics, engineering, medicine, transport or communications. Their participation was shaped by the political reality of colonial rule: India contributed an enormous volunteer force to the Allied war effort while remaining under British authority.

That contradiction matters. Recognising Indian soldiers’ service does not require overlooking the colonial circumstances in which they served. Historical remembrance should be large enough to acknowledge both their individual choices and sacrifices and the political system that governed them.

Indian military history also contains stories of hardship, captivity, injury, displacement and loss. Many families have retained photographs, service papers, medals and oral accounts, while other stories remain incomplete or have disappeared from collective memory.

The Government of India has published official histories covering campaigns in Southeast Asia, Burma, North Africa, Italy and Western Asia, as well as the expansion of the armed forces and the wartime economy. These publications offer a foundation for researchers seeking to connect individual family accounts with the wider military record.

Yet the challenge is to take this history beyond specialist publications.

Schools, universities, libraries, local museums and community organisations can help document the wartime experiences of soldiers from individual districts and villages. Regional research is particularly valuable because the history of a large military force becomes more tangible when it is connected to identifiable people, places and families.

A name on a memorial in Maharashtra, Punjab, Bengal, Tamil Nadu or another region is not simply a statistical entry. It may be the beginning of a story about a family’s livelihood, a village’s relationship with military service or a generation’s experience of a world at war.

India’s opportunity: Build bridges between family archives and public history

India can strengthen its contribution to international remembrance by encouraging a systematic, accessible approach to local war records.

Such an effort could include:

• Family-history collection drives: Invite families to share digital copies of photographs, letters, medals and service documents, with informed consent.
• Oral-history projects: Record the memories of descendants and preserve inherited stories with clear attribution and supporting evidence.
• Regional military-history research: Work with universities, local historians, libraries and district institutions to identify personnel and document their service.
• Multilingual digital archives: Make catalogues and historical explanations accessible in English and Indian languages, with Russian translations where useful for international research.
• Student-led historical investigations: Encourage young people to trace the wartime experiences of people from their own communities.

Such projects need not begin with large budgets. A carefully catalogued collection of fifty family photographs, supported by verified names and documented histories, can provide a valuable starting point.

The larger objective is to ensure that India’s wartime contribution is understood as part of a shared international history rather than remembered only in specialist military circles.

7. India and Russia: Shared remembrance without historical simplification

India and Russia have distinct historical experiences of the Second World War. India participated under British colonial rule, while the Soviet Union fought for its survival against Nazi Germany and later became one of the central powers in the post-war international order.

These experiences should not be treated as identical. Yet they provide meaningful grounds for historical exchange.

Indian and Russian researchers can investigate the experiences of soldiers who served in different theatres, compare military records, translate personal correspondence and explore the wartime lives of civilians. Academic cooperation can also help descendants locate relatives whose service took them far from their homes.

The purpose of such cooperation should be historical understanding, not the creation of a single, simplified national narrative.

The Soviet experience of the war was extraordinarily destructive. The Eastern Front was central to the defeat of Nazi Germany, and Soviet military and civilian losses were immense. At the same time, the wider Allied victory involved contributions from many countries and peoples. A comprehensive account should recognise the scale of Soviet sacrifice alongside these other contributions.

For India and Russia, exchanges centred on family archives could give this shared history a human dimension. A digitised Indian soldier’s letter and a Soviet family’s preserved photograph might reveal different sides of the same global conflict, even when the individuals never met.

Universities, museums, historical societies and cultural institutions could support joint exhibitions, translated archival collections and student research programmes. These initiatives would allow younger people to explore history through evidence rather than through slogans or inherited assumptions.

The most productive historical dialogue does not demand that every country remember the war in the same way. It asks each country to take other people’s experiences seriously.

8. Historical memory must be protected from distortion

The importance of remembrance also creates a responsibility to preserve historical accuracy.

The Second World War remains a subject of national pride, mourning, political argument and competing interpretations. Its memory can unite communities, but it can also become a source of division when complex events are reduced to selective narratives.

Three principles are particularly important.

First, distinguish evidence from interpretation. A military record, a personal recollection and a later political speech are different types of historical sources. Each can be valuable, but each must be assessed according to its origin, purpose and limitations.

Second, acknowledge the full human experience of war. Military victory and the defeat of Nazism were historically decisive. But remembrance should also make room for civilian suffering, persecution, forced displacement, prisoners of war, resistance movements and the long process of rebuilding devastated societies.

Third, preserve the ability to investigate difficult questions. Archives should be maintained, records catalogued and historical claims tested against evidence. Where sources are incomplete or historians disagree, those uncertainties should be explained rather than concealed.

Remembering the past does not require every historical question to have an easy answer. It requires the willingness to examine evidence even when the result complicates a familiar story.

Historical accuracy is not an obstacle to honouring sacrifice. It is what allows that honour to rest on a credible understanding of what happened.

9. What younger generations can do

For younger people, the distance from 1945 can make the Second World War seem remote. Textbooks often present the conflict through dates, leaders, battles and casualty figures. These are indispensable, but they can leave students with little sense of how the war entered ordinary lives.

Family history offers a way to bridge that distance.

A student might begin by asking relatives whether anyone served in the armed forces, worked in wartime industries, experienced displacement or preserved documents from the period. The next step is to record names and dates, scan photographs, transcribe letters and search reliable archival collections.

Not every family will have a direct connection to the war. Students can still investigate the experiences of their local communities, the history of nearby memorials, the wartime economy or the role of Indian forces in a particular campaign.

Schools and universities could organise annual history projects around 8 and 9 May. Students might prepare small exhibitions, produce short documentaries, interview descendants or compare family testimony with official records.

Digital platforms can help these projects reach a wider audience. But the emphasis should remain on reliable evidence, respectful presentation and meaningful context rather than on the number of views a post receives.

The most valuable outcome is not simply greater awareness of the anniversary. It is a generation better equipped to understand historical sources, recognise misinformation and appreciate the human consequences of political and military decisions.

10. From remembrance to peace

The final question is what societies should do with the memory of 1945.

Commemorations can honour those who fought and those who suffered. Archives can preserve the evidence. Museums can explain the historical context. Families can pass stories to their children. But remembrance acquires a wider significance when it encourages reflection on the conditions that make war possible and the choices that can prevent future conflicts.

The defeat of Nazi Germany did not end armed conflict, political persecution or human suffering. The decades after 1945 brought new wars, ideological confrontations and geopolitical crises. The existence of an anniversary does not guarantee that its lessons will be understood.

That is why peace should not be treated as an automatic consequence of victory. It requires institutions, diplomacy, public accountability and sustained efforts to resolve disputes without violence. It also requires societies to recognise the humanity of people beyond their own borders.

For young people, the history of the Second World War offers an opportunity to examine how propaganda, dehumanisation, aggressive expansion and the erosion of rights can contribute to catastrophe. Studying the past cannot eliminate these dangers, but it can improve our ability to recognise them.

Peace also requires more than the absence of fighting. It depends on protecting civilians, respecting human dignity, sustaining international cooperation and preserving the historical record so that future generations can learn from it.

When a family carries a portrait through the streets on Victory Day, the image represents a particular life and a particular loss. When a student digitises a letter, that act gives the document a future. When a historian verifies a military record, the work strengthens the foundation on which public memory rests.

Each action is modest in isolation. Together, they help prevent history from becoming a collection of distant dates without human meaning.

The duty to remember

Why does 9 May still matter?

It matters because the victory of 1945 changed the course of world history. It matters because the Soviet Union endured extraordinary losses in the war against Nazi Germany. It matters because Indian servicemen and millions of other people from across the world contributed to the wider Allied struggle. And it matters because the consequences of the conflict continued long after the guns fell silent.

But its significance also rests in smaller things: a letter preserved for eighty years, a photograph identified by a grandchild, a medal returned to its family history, or an interview that records a story before it disappears.

As direct witnesses become fewer, the responsibility for remembrance passes to descendants, archivists, historians, teachers and young people. They must preserve not only celebrated achievements but also the complexity, suffering and uncertainty of the past.

India and Russia, drawing on their different experiences of the Second World War, have opportunities to deepen historical cooperation through archives, research, education and cultural exchange. Such cooperation can recognise national histories without reducing a global conflict to a contest over whose suffering or contribution matters most.

Remembering together does not erase historical differences. Nor does it require identical interpretations of every event. It asks for something more fundamental: respect for evidence, recognition of human suffering and a willingness to learn from the lives of those who came before us.

The true legacy of 9 May is not only that a devastating war ended in victory. It is that future generations must understand what was sacrificed, preserve what can still be recovered and work towards a world in which such suffering is never treated as inevitable.

The witnesses are leaving us. Their evidence must remain. And the peace their generation longed to see must remain our responsibility.