The release of the last remaining POWs and civilian internees from Soviet prisons revived the hopes of many Germans that their missing relatives were still alive. In the photograph below, people at the Friedland transit camp hold up signs with the names of loved ones and the last place they were heard from – e.g. Minsk or Stalingrad – in the hope that the released prisoners arriving at the camp would be able to provide information on their fate. Even after the last prisoners returned home, more than 1.1 million German soldiers and 30,000 civilian deportees to the Soviet Union were still missing.