Internet resources: Website on Soviet prisoners of war, who perished in Norway, gets unveiled in Oslo

Presentation of the database and the first website krigsgraver.no which would enable to search for names and burial places of Soviet prisoners of war, who perished in German concentration camps in the occupied Norway during World War II, will be launched on March 23, 2011 in Oslo.

Marianne Neerland Soleim, member of the staff of the Falstad Memorial and Human Rights Center, says that the new website and data it provides access to have become a result of work on the project “Graves of soldiers need names”, which was launched in 2009 in order to identify Soviet prisoners of war buried in Norway.

Materials, collected in the Norwegian memorial center, read that in German concentration camps in Norway during World War II there were around 100 000 Soviet captives, who had been taken prisoners and brought to Norway, occupied by Hitler, from different corners of the world – from the Balkans to the former USSR.

When the war finished, about 85 000 former prisoners returned to their Motherland in the Soviet Union. Over 13 000 Soviet prisoners of war, many of them still unidentified, were buried in Norway.

“As for today, approximately a half of 13 000 buried former prisoners has been identified”, explained Ms Soleim. She stresses that people from the former USSR are still looking for their relatives.