The funerals for a Swiss couple who went missing 75 years ago only to be found perfectly preserved on a shrinking glacier in the Alps have been held.
Marcelin and Francine Dumoulin left their seven children to milk their cows in a meadow above Chandolin in the Valais canton on August 15, 1942.
The couple, who were 40 and 37 when they disappeared, were finally laid to rest during a service on Saturday in Saviese in southwestern Switzerland.
Marcelin Dumoulin, 40, was a shoemaker, while Francine, 37, was a teacher.
Daughter Marceline Udry-Dumoulin, now 79, and her sister attended the funeral. The five other children have since died.
“Three-quarters of a century later the family can at last stop asking the question: ‘What happened to them?’” a priest said during the service, according to Switzerland’s The Local.
Udry-Dumoulin last week told the Lausanne daily le Matin: “We spent our whole lives looking for them, without stopping. We thought that we could give them the funeral they deserved one day.”
She added: “I can say that after 75 years of waiting this news gives me a deep sense of calm.”
The bodies were found on the Tsanfleuron Glacier at 2,615 meters (8,580 feet) above sea level. Swiss police say, due to climate change
“It was the first time my mother went with him on such an excursion. She was always pregnant and couldn’t climb in the difficult conditions of a glacier,” Udry-Dumoulin said ahead of the service.
“After a while, we children were separated and placed in families. I was lucky to stay with my aunt,” she said. “We all lived in the region but became strangers.”
Udry-Dumoulin wore white to the funeral, stating: “It represents hope, which I never lost.”
