He is 22 years old, as he walks past long rows of war graves. Hundreds of headstones light up as the sun shines through the pine trees. His eye is drawn to the mysterious script. He has never been here before, but already this remarkable cemetery has a strange attraction for him.

Who are these soldiers? How did they end up here? And how come Reiding, born and living in Amersfoort, has never heard of this Soviet War Cemetery?

These questions are the beginning of a long search. In the years that follow, he dusts off archives that were thought to be lost in order to identify the soldiers. Above all, Reiding finds it hard to accept that the families of these Soviet soldiers were never informed about the fate of their missing relatives. As a novice journalist, it is a huge challenge to bring this war cemetery back from oblivion and to give the soldiers a face.

The search leads to the far corners of a strange, collapsed empire: the former Soviet Union. That is where those left behind live: the wives, brothers, sisters and the children of soldiers who grew up without a father. For decades they live in uncertainy about the fate of their loved one, until a tall boy from the distant, unknown Netherlands comes to tell them where he is buried.

55 years after the end of World War II Reiding succeeds in tracking down the first relatives of the soldiers buried near Amersfoort. Years after he first walked past the gray stones at the Soviet War Cemetery, relatives of the soldiers stand at their father’s grave, crying and holding flowers.

In the meantime, with the help of many agencies and volunteers, he has notified more than two hundred families throughout the former Soviet Union. View the grave register here  with all the data that has become known thanks to research. Watch the NCRV-documentary Dodeweg 31 about the search for relatives.

Remco Reiding has received several awards for his research.