PARIS (AP) – Ceremonies that drew thousands of people into the streets culminated with a solemn tribute to the heroes of the liberation at Paris City Hall – followed by a jubilant outdoor ball.

The liberation “shook France and renewed hope in the world,” said President Jacques Chirac in an address at City Hall, where he decorated veterans and Resistance members.

The liberation was “an essential step in the capitulation of the Nazi regime,” and through it, “France found its place in the world,” Chirac said.

Before a crowd of thousands, and intermittent rain, he stressed the need to transmit the values of postwar France, “our common heritage,” to today’s youth.

The day began at the Eiffel Tower, where six firefighters hoisted the French tricolor up the monument in an emotional re-enactment of the raising of the national flag there six decades ago.

The re-creation was part of a ceremony intended to honor the six firefighters who carried out the dramatic gesture on liberation day, Aug. 25, 1944, officials said.

When the Nazis first marched into town four years earlier on June 14, 1940, they ordered the French flag removed from the Eiffel Tower. The man who took it down was Capt. Lucien Sarniguet – and he vowed to raise it again one day.

“He swore that he would be the one to put it back up. He kept his word,” said Sarniguet’s daughter, Jeanne-Marie Badoche, 77, who attended the ceremony with her family. “For four long years, he waited for that day.”

Sarniguet had a flag fashioned out of dyed sheets and hid it during the Nazi occupation so the Germans wouldn’t find it, she said.

Pierre Noel, one of only two surviving firefighters out of the original six, received the City of Paris’ highest honor – the Grand Vermeil Medal – from Mayor Bertrand Delanoe.

Paris also was honoring its liberators – Resistance fighters who took their clandestine battle to the streets and French and American soldiers whose military might assured victory.

Shamed, hungry and on its knees for four years during World War II, Paris was standing again on liberation day, spared Adolf Hitler’s order to demolish the French capital – but still dodging bullets and bombs.

Yvette Luccioni, 69, said she and her family slept in a subway station for a week because their house on the Paris outskirts had nearly been hit by a German bomb. But the joy of seeing American soldiers enter the city overshadowed the difficulties. “Everyone kissed the Americans. Everyone was crying,” she said, tears filling her eyes at the memory.

With the liberation “Paris again became a city of light,” said noted director Jerome Savary, who enlisted 1,000 Parisians for celebrations that crisscrossed the city and were to wind down with a swing and bebop ball at the Place de la Bastille. Parisians were asked to don 1940s garb.

Jubilant scenes from the liberation were re-enacted by actors in period clothes. Dozens of performers portrayed French and American columns of soldiers rolling into town. Actors dressed like GIs were covered in red-lipstick kisses. A 10-piece band played jazz and swing music from the 1940s.

“It’s not our generation, but it’s important to see this,” said Charlotte Colle, 16, who stopped to watch the American column.

Chirac oversaw the placing of a plaque at the Paris Police Headquarters where German Gen. Dietrich von Choltitz surrendered to French Gen. Philippe Leclerc.

Von Choltitz, who had leveled Rotterdam, Holland, and Sevastopol, Russia, surrendered having deliberately ignored Hitler’s orders to destroy Paris. He could not burden his conscience with the destruction of what he had come to revere as “the most beautiful city in the world.”

Solemnity during Wednesday’s ceremonies also was in order. More than 1,400 Parisians – including 582 civilians – were killed in street battles, according to the Jean Moulin Museum. Some 3,200 Nazis were killed.

At the Place de la Concorde, Chirac paid special tribute to Leclerc’s 2nd Armored Division, greeting some 600 soldiers – including 100 veterans – who, starting Tuesday, retraced the soldiers’ journey into the capital.

The arrival of the French division and the 4th American Infantry Division set off an explosion of joy that itself has become a historic event.

“The liberation of Paris was one of the most extreme cases of mass joy you could ever find,” said British World War II historian David Wingeate Pike of the American University of Paris.

Soldiers were covered in kisses. But Maurice Cordier, 84, a veteran of Leclerc’s 2nd Division, also remembers the risks.

“A big mess. An enormous mess,” he said of the Allies’ arrival.

“The enthusiasm of the people who came out, it was madly imprudent,” he told Associated Press Television News. “They came out before the fighting was over. There were some who were stupidly killed.”

Paris’ tribute to its liberation was the last in a series of 60th anniversary commemorations by France marking critical moments leading to the capitulation of Germany and the end of World War II. A day of ceremonies to mark D-Day on June 6, 1944 – which paved the way for Paris’ liberation – drew royalty and heads of state.