Lithuania has completed the exhumation of the remains of Soviet soldiers from a cemetery in the centre of Vievis, a town in in the Elektrenai municipality, local authorities said Wednesday.
“Archaeological research at the Vievis Soviet soldiers’ cemetery was successfully concluded this week,” Vievis Mayor Gediminas Ratkevičius said. Archaeologists discovered the remains of 81 people who died during World War Two, he said.
The remains are being prepared for transfer to specialists at the Department of Anatomy, Histology and Anthropology at Vilnius University’s Faculty of Medicine for detailed anthropological examination. They will later be reburied at an Orthodox cemetery in Vievis.
The Soviet soldiers were buried in the centre of Vievis, near St Anne’s Church. A monument to Soviet soldiers, accompanied by an eternal flame, formerly stood at the site.
The decision to remove the burial site followed findings by Lithuania’s so-called De-Sovietisation Commission, which concluded that the site violated a ban on promoting totalitarian and authoritarian regimes and their ideologies in public spaces.
