Τhe first remains of the train collision victims have been being returned to families in sealed caskets on Friday and the first funeral has been held in Katerini, northern Greece, on the same day.
34-year-old and mother of a 2-year-old child Athina was traveling together with her husband. He survived even though injured because he changed the carriage for a toilet visit. She did not make it. Still hospitalized, her husband does not know that his wife passed away. Her white coffin was reportedly sealed.
The victims’ bodies severely damaged or even totally burned were identified through DNA samples in a round-the-clock identification process, which involves two stages: Matching body parts to each individual victim and then establishing identities using DNA samples from relatives of missing passengers.
According to Greek Police on Friday noon, 57 people have died, while 38 are still hospitalized, 7 of them in ICUs.
Among the dead are two Cypriot students, five Albanian nationals and one citizen from Bangladesh, media reported.
52 remains have been identified and 14 families have been informed accordingly.
Relatives of passengers still listed as unaccounted-for waited outside a hospital in the central city of Larissa for news. Among them was Mirella Ruci, whose 22-year-old son, Denis, remained missing, reports the Associated Press.
“My son is not on any official list so far and I have no information. I am pleading with anyone who may have seen him, in rail car 5, seat 22, to contact me if they may have seen him,” Ruci, who struggled to stop her voice from cracking, told reporters.
On social media, family and friends who posted in the first hours of the train tragedy pictures and names of their “missing” beloved ones, confirm the big and painful loss amid feeling of deepest sorrow and huge rage and demand Justice.
Sealed caskets anger families, divide society
The decision of the Health Ministry to hand over the remains in sealed coffins was accepted by some families and strongly objected by others. The families claim that it is their right to decide whether they would want to say Farewell to their beloved ones, no matter the conditions of the remains.
Speaking to Mega TV Live News magazine, psychiatrist/psychotherapist Dimitris Dimitriadis described the Ministry decision as “deliberate stealing from the families the right to mourn as they wish.”
He pointed out that such a decision violates Article 8 of the Human Rights Charter.
The decision has also divided Greeks on social media.
POLL: And you? What do you think?
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Personally I don’t like the tradition of the open coffin and seeing and touching a dead loved one under normal circumstances, and I especially wouldn’t want to see a person who had died such a horrible death in a fire. I want my final memory of the person to be as they were alive, not dead, and certainly wouldn’t want that horrific image left in my mind. Nonetheless, my vote is for letting the family decide. One doesn’t have to approach the coffin at a funeral, one can keep a distance if one thinks it will affect them. Approaching the coffin is optional.