Insignia found in Maarjamäe war graves points to Kriegsmarine personnel
Evidence found at the construction site of the new memorial for the victims of communism in Maarjamäe suggests that the German war graves recently discovered hold the remains of members of the Kriegsmarine, the WWII era German navy.
According to Arnold Unt, who is studying the war graves recently found in Maarjamäe, 24 graves have so far been uncovered. Among the objects found are military identification tags, rank and other insignia, and uniform buttons.
The latter are golden and embossed with anchor signs, which points to members of the Kriegsmarine, the German Wehrmacht's navy.
A piece of a Finnish newspaper from the time the soldiers were buried could mean that the bodies were brought to Tallinn from Finland, Unt said. The found objects along with the human remains found in the graves will be handed over to Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V., the German war graves maintenance society.
The soldiers will be reburied on the plot of the German war cemetery a few dozen meters away from the site. The area where the graves were found is a previously unknown part of the existing German war cemetery in the vicinity of the Soviet-era Maarjamäe war memorial.
Editor: Dario Cavegn
