The telephone rang on Tuesday morning, and I decided to pick it up.

My mother-in-law was on the line.

"Happy holiday!" she chortled. I didn't understand at first. "What holiday?" I said. "Victory Day!" she shot back. Her voice now carried a note of indignation.

Victory Day, of course! I'd simply forgotten. It was May 9th, the 61st anniversary of Germany's unconditional surrender to the Allies in World War II. In Germany -- can you blame them? -- May 9th isn't a holiday. My mother-in-law is Russian, though, and she was calling from Moscow.

"Happy holiday!" I chortled. My mother-and-law and I are allies.

Tatiana Sergeyevna -- that's my mother-in-law -- was 3 years old on May 9, 1945. She was born in Tashkent, Uzbek S.S.R., and nearly died of typhoid there. Her maiden name was Swedish (her father's father was a Swede), so her family, deemed potentially unreliable by the Soviet authorities, was evacuated from Moscow to the Soviet hinterland at the start of the war. This indignity was really a blessing: Her father wasn't sent to the front.

The war left an estimated 27 million Soviets dead.

After I hung up the telephone, I got out a music box that Tatiana Sergeyevna gave me in 1995, the 50th anniversary of the end of what the Russians call the Great Patriotic War. I opened it, and my wife and I listened to the popular Russian "Victory Day" song. My wife sang along. In the music box is a pocket watch embossed with a portrait of Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov, who, among his other World War II exploits, commanded the final assault on Berlin in 1945. When we were living in Moscow, we'd often arrange to meet friends by the big equestrian statue of Zhukov, which is just off Red Square.

May 9th passed quietly in Germany, just another day. That's not to say the Germans don't remember. Some do, anyway. Here and there are commemorative events. They don't celebrate Germany's defeat, naturally, but the end of the horrible war, and "liberation" from fascism. The mood at such affairs is thoughtful, not proud, not joyous. As on the anniversary of a shotgun wedding.