Every year the Russians sent thousands of requests to various authorities, trying to establish the fate of their loved ones killed or missing during the Second world war. According to the combat reports for the war years in the lists of missing persons got 4.5 million soldiers of the red Army.
But almost nothing is known about the fates of many of the victims: no place of burial, nor the battle path, nor the place of death. As it became known later, most of them were captured, but the fate of more than 1 million people and failed to install, they are still missing. Before to find this information, it was necessary to write the request to the recruitment office and archives, but such applications were returned without a response. Now, as digitization of various military archives — opportunities to find the missing information online.
bi-Bi-si tells what sites can help to learn more the soldiers and officers of the red army who were killed or missing during the Second world war.
you should Start with the database “Memorial”. They collected reports of combat units on the losses, “funerals”, paper hospitals and field hospital, trophy cards Soviet prisoners of war, as well as data on some individual and fraternal graves of Soviet soldiers and officers.
On the website explains how to use the base. But the main advice would be not to fill all of the search strings. You need to keep in mind that during the war the name and other details of the soldier could write on the documents with distortion due haste or error.
Experts in search for missing soldiers suggest to start to enter the name, and then “sift” the list of namesakes on the basis of the additional information that you have. If such a search yields no results, it makes sense to try to test in tune with the names. Scribes could accidentally distort the name of a fighter in repeated re-registration of securities.
for example, how looking for her grandfather Paul Ageikina — his granddaughter.
“Many of the documents during the war were written by hand, everything depended on the handwriting of the writing. And you can read it — Achicken, Aickin, Anichkin , etc. Knowing this feature, I found it on the OBD MEMORIAL. There he recorded as Aickin. Ibid applied the questionnaire from the military, it is recorded and my grandmother (the grandfather’s wife) under the name Anichkina Maria Vasilievna,” says the granddaughter of a red army soldier Natalia Shustova.
the digitization of the archives continues, so, if this time to find the information has failed, it makes sense to try to return to the search in six months.
Often due to the basis of the “Memorial” manages to find out the fate of man in just a few minutes. But sometimes the missing information has to be gleaned from many meats.
you can find a Lot of premium sheets. Information about the awards and medals that were awarded to the red army gathered on the website “feat of the people” (there you can read about the awards not only dead soldiers and officers, but also those who survived).
But most of those who died in 1941-1942, did not have awards. To set their destiny, have to do a little historical study, comparing the facts from a person’s biography with the events in specific areas of the fronts and stories of individual units.
to Restore the combat path you can learn what units they served. If the house kept the letters should try to read the number of the field postal station (PPS) on the stamp of the envelope. It is possible to set the number of the division or regiment in which the person served.
the Reference transcripts of the post stations on the site “Soldiers”. Knowing the number of the regiment, you can read about transactions in which he participated. Information about this is available on the website dedicated to the red Army.
everyone who was in the hospital during the war, got a special card. It stated what the wounded man where he was treated and where he was sent after discharge. These cards are now in the archive military health documents St. Petersburg.
This file is not digitised, so you’ll have to send a paper request to the address: the branch of the Central archive of the Ministry of defence of the Russian Federation (military-medical documents) 191180 G. St. Petersburg, Lazaretny pereulok, Dom 2.
the People making such requests are advised to send the application by registered letter with notification — this greatly reduces the likelihood that the paper will be lost. The answer is to wait about six months.
In this or any other queries it is advisable to report all known about the relative information — surname, name, patronymic, year and place of birth, place of recruitment, the number of the military unit where he served, military rank, date last letters and any information that can help narrow down the search scope.
If a person fought in the partisan detachments; had been released from captivity, and passed the filtration camps of the NKVD during world war II were forcibly taken to work in Germany, you will also have to submit a request. What to do that is described on the website of the Federal archival Agency of Russia.
Information about those who were in captivity or forced labor in Germany, you can also look on the website of the Association “Saxon memorials” in memory of the victims of political terror, the city of Dresden and the International Tracing Service in bad Arolsen.
If after all this information search has stalled, there is still one hope.
One of the important sources of information about the dead and missing in the war, the soldiers began to search engines. The so-called volunteers involved in the search for the remains of soldiers who died during the Second world war. The bodies of hundreds of thousands of such warriors were buried after the end of fighting, and their remains are still on battlefields.
Several times a year the search engines go to these places looking for victims and trying to identify them. The names of all identified soldiers is in the books “the Names of the soldiers’ medallions,” right to view the lists that you have on the website each volume manually.
Also to know, did the search engines your missing or deceased relative, on the site of the all-Russian information retrieval center.
