HALBE, Germany (AP) — In a forest near Berlin, the remains of 107 fallen Wehrmacht soldiers were ceremoniously interred last week. High school students placed white gerbera daisies on small black coffins, and then German soldiers lowered them respectfully into a large, freshly dug grave as a military band played a solemn tune.
Hundreds of villagers and relatives of fallen soldiers watched silently, some wiping tears off their cheeks, as the soldiers who died in one of the last large battles of World War II fighting for Adolf Hitler’s army got their final resting place.
The gestures of remembrance are part of a long, complicated — and sometimes controversial — effort to bring the German dead to rest, 80 years after a war that Nazi Germany started.
It’s still not the end — much work remains to identify the dead and notify any surviving family members.
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