Arnhem, Berlin, Coventry, St. Petersberg, Reims, Trieste, Vienna – the one thing these locations have in common is that they were all involved in WWII and celebrated the end of that war, in Europe, 60 years ago, on May 8th. These sites, and many others contributed by 22 photographers from more than 15 countries, can be found in a memorial website dedicated to WWII landmarks in Europe. Compiled by Mickael Therer, each of the 100-plus fullscreen panoramas at “Panoramas of WW2 European Landmarks” is accompanied by moving descriptions of the events that occurred at the site. 
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In building this website, Mickael Therer hopes to initiate a contemporary view on the heritage of WWII and motivate people to visit these locations in person. He invited panoramic photographers to participate, established some technical guidelines, and tried to maximize the number of nations represented. It is still possible to submit panoramas, as one of the objectives of this project is to bring together all historical WWII locations in a permanent QTVR documentation.
Operation Market Garden, an ill-conceived Allied effort well-documented in the book and subsequent movie, ‘A Bridge Too Far’, is represented with a pano of the John Frost Bridge, named after the Allied commander given the disastrous task of taking, and holding for two days, the Rhine bridge at Arnhem in September 1944. Despite heavy casualties and lack of adequate support, Frost managed to hold a position near the bridge for four days until they were finally forced out by the Germans.
Two notorious concentration camps are represented with 12 panoramas. The Birkenau entrance at Auschwitz, built in 1940, stands as a stark reminder of the terror and genocide of the Holocaust. In Germany, a memorial site was set up in 1965 on the grounds of the Dachau Concentration Camp, where political prisoners were sent. Established in 1933 and in operation for 12 years, it became a model for all later camps. In its 12-year history over 200,000 were imprisoned here and more than 43,000 died at the camp. Mario W. Schild contributed 11 panos, including the barracks, crematorium and gas chamber
In Maribor, Slovenia, the country’s second largest city is shown, in a series of photos from the era, during the German occupation. In Yad Vashem, Israel, although no battle was fought at the site, a memorial to victims of the Holocaust, and those who helped Jews during the war, is presented. And in Austria, Hartheim Castle, once a home for handicapped children, was appropriated by the Germans and became a “Euthanasia’ Center. The Piskariyovskoye Cemetery in St. Petersberg is all that remains of hundreds of thousands of people, most of whom died of starvation during the war and were buried in mass graves.
There are six panos of Berlin, showing showing cenotaphs, pockmarked buildings, current day streets and a view into the ruins of the former Anti-Aircraft Woers at Humboldthain Park. The “Neue Reichskanzlei” is an everyday street scene of modern apartment buildings and an empty lot, which occupy the former grounds of Hitler’s residence – heavily damaged in the Battle of Berlin and pulled down in 1949. The area where he committed suicide and his body was burned, behind the apartments, is now a parking lot.
Andrei Bodrov contributed two panoramas from Tallinn, Estonia. The first is a pano of the Soviet Soldier monument in Tallinn, Estonia, erected in 1947 to commemorate the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany; however, the statue was a symbol of occupation for Estonians until the script beneath the statue was changed to “For those fallen in WWII”. The pano was shot just hours before 2000 people gathered for a memorial ceremony and the monument was defaced with red paint.
Submit panos to the site here: http://www.ww2panorama.org/submit
