Massgrave from finnish winterwar ?

[errorbugg]

Hi

Me and my friend visited several memorials in northern finland two years ago.
One of them was the Raate road. It is one of the roads the russians used when invading finland the 30th november 1939.

What happened was the finns killed two divions around suomussalmi. One of the divions did not ever get off the road. 10000 killed or frozen to death along the 20 km road.

Near the museum in the west entry of the road there is a russian memorial where 58 men was buried. But where are the other 9942 men buried ?

Took another trip to the site... with googlemaps

I found two areas near the road with several strange lines in swamp-areas.
I think that must be the massgraves of the russians.

I have read the finns had to bury the russian soldiers and horses after they serrended in mars 40. They did not honour the soldier more than throwing the rotten bodies into the nearest swamp. And i understand them.

What do you think ?
Massgrav - Google Maps

About 300 metres northeast of star there is another similar area.

More..
Battle of Raate Road - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[darrenj40]

This is true the finns buried the dead in mass graves, anywhere and everywhere..they were buried in the spring thaw, and yes it is also true that no memoriels were placed, this is a sad fact of war....

[kemi]

Hey

The Finns threw all the bodies in mass graves because the Russians did not want them back. Stalin had told the Russian people that only 350 soldiers had died in soumusalmi . so the Russians only wanted to have 350 bodies back to russia. they did not want to show the Russian people how many troops they had lost to the Finns.

[CARL]

Without visiting the actual location, merely viewing the shots using googleearth, I would say that this location is quite possibly the site of a mass grave. Having had experience studying several mass grave sites at WW2 locations, I can say that the features of the landscape do correlate to those that I have seen.

Regards

Carl