Marcelin and Francine Dumoulin, disappeared in the Alps on August 15, 1942
Searches were carried out and their seven children were put in foster homes
Bodies were found lying in the Diablerets massif in Switzerland on Thursday
With DNA tests still pending, their daughter says bodies belong to her parents
The head of the Glacier 3000 ski resort said the couple likely fell into a crevasse
A couple that disappeared in the Alps 75 years ago has been found preserved in a receding glacier, ending decades of uncertainty for their seven children, Swiss media reported on Tuesday.
The bodies were found lying near each other in the Diablerets massif in southern Switzerland, along with backpacks, a bottle, a book and a watch.
The head of the Glacier 3000 ski resort, Bernard Tschannen, said that the bodies were found last Thursday.
The bodies of a couple that disappeared 75 years ago were found lying in the Diablerets massif in southern Switzerland, on Thursday, along with backpacks, a bottle, a book and a watch
'It was a man and a woman wearing clothes from the last (world) war', Tschannen told the Le Matin daily. 'The ice preserved them perfectly and their belongings were intact'.
Marcelin Dumoulin, a 40-year-old shoemaker at the time, and his wife Francine, a schoolteacher aged 37, had left their village of Chandolin to milk their cows in a meadow above Chandolin in the Valais canton on August 15, 1942.
The couple never returned from their trip, and Tschannen said that the couple had likely fallen into a crevasse.
A DNA search has been planned to definitively establish their identities, but Marceline Udry-Dumoulin said she believed the remains were of her parents, Marcelin and Francine Dumoulin.
'We spent our whole lives searching for them, without stopping. We never thought we'd be able to give them the funeral they deserved,' Dumoulin, who was four when her parents went missing, told Le Matin.
'I can say that after 75 years of waiting this news gives me a deep sense of calm,' added the 79-year-old.
Searches were carried out for more than two months but ultimately the seven orphans - five boys and two girls - were placed in foster homes.
'It was the first time my mother went with him on such an excursion. She was always pregnant and couldn't climb in the difficult conditions of a glacier,' Udry-Dumoulin said.
'After a while, we children were separated and placed in families. I was lucky to stay with my aunt,' she said. 'We all lived in the region but became strangers.'
'For the funeral, I won't wear black. I think that white would be more appropriate. It represents hope, which I never lost.'