About 100 photographs show various WWII episodes, including not only moments of battle, but also the soldiers toiled labor and rare minutes of rest. The pictures, taken by press photographers who risked their lives working in combat conditions, reflect the bitterness of defeat, the tears of loss and the joy of victory.

The exhibit features photographs by photographers Ivan Shagin,

Ads

Georgy Zelma, Max Alpert, Mikhail Trakhman, Yevgeny Khaldei, Mikhail Redkin and other witnesses of the historic 1941-1945 events.

The exhibition is scheduled to be opened by RIA Novostis General Director Svetlana Mironyuk, Russian Ambassador to France Alexander Avdeyev and the Russian Defense Ministrys Military University head Colonel-General Valery Marchenkov.

"It is profoundly symbolic that the photo exhibition, devoted to the 60th anniversary of the great victory, is being held in the capital of France, the country whose people fought courageously and selflessly shoulder to shoulder with the Russians and other peoples against fascism, the 20th centurys brown plague. The fiery years of the heaviest trials, irreplaceable losses, sufferings, monstrous vandalism and barbarity are receding ever farther in the past, but with historys every step it is becoming increasingly obvious that those were also the years of an unprecedented upswing in mans spirit, sacrifice and love, solidarity, unselfishness and mass heroism," Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov said in a statement to exhibit visitors.

The exhibition in the House of Invalids (founded by Louis XIV in 1670) will be open until mid-May and could be visited by about 200,000 people.

PARIS, February 7 (RIA Novosti, Viktor Onuchko)