The frozen bodies of a Swiss couple missing 75 years in the Alps were found in a thawed glacier, Swiss media reported Tuesday.
Marceline and Francine Dumoulin, parents of seven children, left their home on August 15, 1942, to milk their cows in the meadow over the Chandolin region of Canton in southwestern Switzerland.
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The Canton police department released a statement on Monday that two bodies carrying identity papers were discovered last week by an employee at Glacier Tessenfluoron near a cable car over the 2,615-meter Diablo ski resort.
The Swiss authorities will take DNA samples from the bodies found to confirm their identity. “The bodies lay side by side, a man and a woman wearing clothes dating back to World War II,” Bernhard Schaanen, director of the Glacier 3000 resort, told Le Matin. “The bodies were completely preserved and their belongings were intact.”
“We think they probably fell into a crack in the glacier and stayed there for decades,” Sha’anan told Tribune de Geneva.
Marcellin Dumoulin, 40, was a shoe manufacturer. His wife, Francine, 37, was a teacher. They left behind five boys and two girls. “It was the first time my mother went with him on such a trip, and she was always pregnant and could not climb the hard way of the iceberg,” said Audrey Dumoulin’s youngest daughter. “After a while, we children were separated and put us in different families, and I was lucky enough to stay with my aunt,” she said. “We all lived in the area, but we became strangers to each other.”
“We spent our whole lives looking for them without stopping, and we thought we could one day give them the burial they deserve,” said the couple’s youngest daughter, Marcellin Audrey-Dumoulin, to the daily Le Matin of Lausanne. “I can say that after 75 years of waiting, this news gives me a deep sense of calm,” added the 79-year-old daughter.
“I will not wear black for the funeral, I think the son will be more appropriate, and that represents hope, which I never lost,” said the daughter of the couple, whose bodies were found 75 years after they disappeared.
