Important

In 1942-1945 one of the largest camps for the  interned Soviet war prisoners was located near the railway station Krampen in Skinnskatteberg kommun of  Västmanland län. In 1944 they cut a red star on a boulder near the road in memory of their stay there. “The Russian Stone”, as people started to call it, situated in a calm and unremarkable place, in the depth of the Swedish forests, was found and restored by Yngve Gunnarsson and his wife Barbro. With the help of the local  residents and municipal authorities this stone has become a memorial and represents today a symbol of courage and tragedy of the Second World War times.    On May 5, 2011 the Swedish citizen Yngve Gunnarsson was decorated by the Russian Order of Friendship during the official ceremony at the Embassy of the Russian Federation in Sweden in accordance with the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev’s decree № 1175 dated September 25, 2010. The state award was handed over by the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Russian Federation in the Kingdom of Sweden Igor Neverov in the presence of many guests with veterans of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 among them.
Yngve Gunnarsson was awarded this Order for his unselfish activity of many years to preserve and keep the memory of the Soviet soldiers and officers who were taken prisoners during the World War II but managed to escape from the fascist concentration camps in Norway and camps in Finland to Sweden.