The Kazakhstan Embassy has published an updated list of Soviet Kazakh soldiers buried in Norway
Oslo, March 18, 2021 – The Kazakh Embassy in Oslo has published an updated list of Kazakh soldiers (as of March 2021) who died in captivity in occupied Norway during World War II.
In recent months, the names and places of burial of 12 Kazakh soldiers have been identified, and the total number is 56 people with confirmed data.
The list includes available information about the date and place of a soldier’s birth, conscription, service, capture, death and burial of soldiers, as well as links to available documents and information about relatives. The list was compiled by comparing information obtained from several data sources, such as Falstad Center (Norway), the Databank of servicemen who died and disappeared during the Great Patriotic War, called up from the territory of Kazakhstan, Memorial, and the Generalized databank “ Memorial “(Russia).
The information provided by Falstad Center is valuable in that it contains accurate information about the place where the soldier was buried. The Russian “Memorial” contains a card index of prisoners of war, and the data of the Kazakhstan “Memorial” – detailed information about the place of birth and conscription of a soldier in Kazakhstan. Many soldiers are listed in only one or two databases, which also makes it difficult to identify a soldier. In many cases, there is a problem of distortion of names, surnames, geographical names.
The embassy continues to interact with the Norwegian Falstad Center in order to compile as complete a list of Kazakh soldiers as possible resting in Norway. To date, it is known about 15,500 Soviet prisoners of war buried in Norway, the names of 7,804 of them have been established. The origin of most of the soldiers is extremely difficult to find out, since there are no documents or other information other than the name.
In addition, the Embassy is studying information from other documentary sources about the fate of Kazakhstanis in Norway, such as the death of 22 Kazakhstanis during the bombing of Kirkenes on June 27, 1944.
Since the publication of the first list of 44 soldiers in January 2020, the relatives of only one soldier have so far been found. The embassy hopes that the published information will help to find descendants, relatives and friends of the soldiers, and will also contribute to further research and perpetuation of military memory.
In the photo: A monument at the Soviet military cemetery on the island of Tjetta, Norway.