The municipality also wants to remove around 90 headstones, at the Tehumardi memorial, on the grounds that they bear a Soviet-era five-pointed star. It is not entirely clear how many actual sets of human remains are buried at Tehumardi,

The October 8, 1944 Battle of Tehumardi formed part of the Moonsund Operation, Soviet forces' amphibious landing on Saaremaa.

Saaremaa's mayor, Mikk Tuisk, told AK that: "The wish is that those soldiers who, it is said, are buried here under tombstones and graves can be exhumed, and laid to rest in the cemetery."

"Once the soldiers' remains are removed from here, as many as there end up being, we would actually like to take the gravestones away from here. The monument, which is a large pillar, would stay in place, to cover some areas. But essentially, yes, with these gravestones as such, we can see that there is no real need to keep them here. Especially given the pentagram which still adorn them. That is not a nice thing to see," Tuisk went on.

The Saaremaa local government has thus submitted a corresponding request to Tehumardi for the re-interment of the remains, to the war graves commission, which is under the auspices of the National War Museum (Eesti Sõjamuuseum).

Hellar Lill, director of the war museum, located in Viimsi, confirmed this, adding that that a decision on Tehumardi will be made in the coming months.

According to Mayor Tuisk, there are supposedly people buried under the tombstones of Tehumardi, but whether there are 90 is doubtful in his opinion. "But then you can see what comes out of digging."

In the past, however, the Heritage Protection Board (Muinsuskaitseamet) holds a slightly different opinion on the Tehumardi complex, and finds that that after re-interment, the current 90 head stones could in fact remain, provided the five-pointed star is removed. The boars is of the opinion that the 21-meter long sword-shaped memorial pillar in concert with the complexes' tombstones form an artistically and architecturally unified whole.

Hellar Lill said. "We are here talking about war graves, not the big, monumental work of art. We have the competence to make this decision on the war graves, and a representative of the Heritage Protection Board sits on our committee, while we always inform the board about what we are doing with our work."

On the other side of the road, however, sits is a rather more modest memorial stone erected to the soldiers who lost their lives on the German side during the Battle of Tehumardi, whose fighting mostly took place at night.

This memorial was installed there only 12 years ago, AK reported.

Under current Estonian law, the removal and/or relocation of soviet war memorials and related installations is the responsibility of local government, unless human remains form an integral part of the site, in which case it becomes the responsibility of the state, as in the case of Tehumardi.

More stringent legislation dealing with relics from the Soviet era including details which glorify the occupation, or other occupations and wars, is currently stuck at the legislature after the head of state declined to give his assent to it, nearly a year ago, citing a conflict with the Constitution.

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