The German War Graves Commission launched a campaign on Tuesday, the 67th anniversary of the end of World War II, to promote its online database as a way for relatives to trace missing soldiers. Some 40,000 are located and reburied each year across Eastern Europe and Russia -- where its teams still encounter hostility from locals who remember the murderous occupation.

Some 3 million German soldiers died in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in World War II, and the fate of hundreds of thousands of them remains unknown to their relatives and descendants.

On Tuesday, May 8, the 67th anniversary of Nazi Germany's capitulation and the end of the war in Europe, the German War Graves Commission launched a campaign inviting people to consult its online database, which contains information on 4.6 million soldiers killed or missing in action.

"People are still looking for missing relatives today. But many have given up hope. Maybe they don't know that the commission can provide answers," Martin Dodenhoeft, head of communications at the organization, said in a statement. "That is why we have started a radio campaign to tell a broad audience about this possibility offered by the Internet."...