Mon, 18 May, 2015 12:01:15 AM FTimes – STT Report, May 18  Unidentified 76 deceased heroes who died in the Winter War and the Continuation War between 1939 and 1945 were on Sunday consecrated and laid to rest in Lappeenranta. Photo – Str / Lehtikuva. Seventy-six unidentified heroes who had died in the Winter War and the Continuation War between 1939 and 1945 were consecrated and laid to rest in Lappeenranta in a national commemoration event held on Sunday.
From 1992 to 2014, about 1,180 remains of Finnish soldiers have been returned to the country. Of them, the identities of 340 soldiers have been confirmed through DNA analyses at the Department of Forensic Medicine of the University of Helsinki.
The identified soldiers have been laid to rest in their local hero cemeteries.
The unidentified remains of soldiers have been laid to rest mainly in Lappeenranta, Joensuu and Kajaani hero cemeteries.
The Association for Cherishing the Memory of the Dead of the War coordinates the search work with the Russians.
General Arto Räty and others on the occasion in Lappeenranta on Sunday. Photo – Str / Lehtikuva. According to Pertti Suominen, the chairperson of the association, the cooperation has progressed well and the remains have been handed from both side.
When the operations began in the beginning of the 1990s, it was more systematic.
According to Suominen, extensive searches are not conducted nowadays, but, instead, search operations are based on narratives and archive data.
The operations, according to Suominen, are set to continue for decades.
The association is also involved in restoring and maintenance of graveyards in the annexed territory. It also conducts memorial visits of monuments in honour of the Finnish prisoners of war in Russia and Kazakhstan.
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