Name list of soldiers killed and missing. Search for a person using a consolidated database
Good day everyone!
Not long ago I tried to help an acquaintance find relatives who fought in the Second World War (1941-1945). Oddly enough, we managed to find his grandfather quite quickly, the number of his unit where he fought, and also looked at several of his awards. My friend was pleased and proud of his grandfather, but I started thinking...
I think that almost every family has relatives who participated in the Great Patriotic War, and many would like to know more about them (which is why I decided to write this article). Moreover, many old people do not like to talk about the front, and often in the family they do not even know all the grandfather’s awards!
By the way, many people mistakenly believe (and I did until recently) that in order to find at least something, you need to know a lot of information about a person, know how to access archives (and where to go), have a lot of free time, etc. . But in fact, now, to try to start a search, it’s enough to know your first and last name.
And so, below I will consider several interesting sites in more detail...
Addition!
If you have old photographs and you notice how they are getting worse and worse every year, digitize and restore them. Now any novice user can handle this -
No. 1: Feat of the people
A very, very interesting site created by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. It is a large database in which all available documents from military archives are entered: where and who fought, what awards he received, what feats, etc. Absolutely everyone is included, regardless of rank and scale of feat. I can add that the size of the site’s database has no analogues.
Then you will see a list of found people: note that there can be a lot of them if your relative has a common first and last name. Opposite each person his year of birth, rank, order, medal (if any) will be displayed.
The card itself displays quite a lot of information about the person: rank, place of conscription, place of service, date of feat (if any), archival documents about the award, registration card, photo of a piece of paper describing the feat, medals and orders (example below).
In general, quite informative and complete. I recommend starting your search for a person from this site. If you are lucky and you find information about him here, then you will receive pretty decent information to continue the search (you will know the year of birth, the unit where you served, where you were drafted from, etc. details that many no longer know about).
By the way, despite the fact that all the basic information has already been posted on the site, from time to time it is updated with new archival data. Therefore, if you haven’t found anything, try to come back after some time and search again, also use the sites that I will give below.
No. 2: OBD Memorial
The full name of the site is Generalized Data Bank.
The main goal of this site is to enable citizens to find and learn about the fate of their relatives, find out their burial place, where they served, and other information.
The Military Memorial Center of the Russian Armed Forces has carried out unique work, as a result of which you can use a reference system of global significance!
The data used to populate the database of this site is taken from official archival documents located in the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the Central Naval Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Military Archive, the State Archive of the Russian Federation, etc.
During the work, more than 16.8 million documents and over 45 thousand passports of military graves were scanned and posted online.
How to search for a person in the OBD
Yes, in general it’s standard. On the main page of the site, enter all the information you know into the search fields. It would be very nice to enter at least the first name, last name, and patronymic. Then click the search button (example below).
In the data found, you will see the person’s date and place of birth, which you can use to navigate and start viewing the necessary profiles.
In the questionnaire you can find out the following information: full name, date and place of birth, date and place of conscription, military rank, reason for retirement, date of retirement, name of the source of information, fund number, source of information. And also look at the scanned sheet itself with archival data.
No. 3: Memory of the people
Another site with a huge database created by the Ministry of Defense. The main goal of the project is to enable all users to obtain information about participants in the Great Patriotic War through new web tools and the development of generalized data banks “Memorial” and “Feat of the People in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.”
To start searching for a person, just enter his full name (if any, then his year of birth). Then click the "Find" button.
Next, you will be shown all found people with similar initials. By opening a card for a person, you will find out: his date of birth, place of conscription, military units, awards, dates of feats, numbers of funds - sources of information, archive, you can see scans of what awards were given for.
In addition, on this site you can see what the path along which your grandfather moved and fought was like. (example on the map below: the beginning of the journey near Novosibirsk, then Tyumen, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny, etc.).
Note: the map is quite large, and the screenshot below shows a small piece of it.
Where my grandfather was and fought - the path on the map!
No. 4: Immortal Regiment
This is the official website of the Immortal Regiment movement. Those who live in Russia probably know and have heard about it. In general, I mentioned this site for the simple reason - that you can try searching on it (to do this, simply enter the required full name into the search term of the site).
Search by movement database (from the Immortal Regiment website)
By the way, I also want to note that the site has already collected about half a million profiles and they are constantly being added. In addition, you can tell your story about your grandfather (everything you know) and his profile will be entered into the site database (what if someone adds your information?!).
Screenshot from the Immortal Regiment website
From the soldier’s profile you can find out quite detailed information about him: full name, rank, region, locality, history, etc. An example of a card is shown in the screenshot below.
What a soldier’s profile will look like (screenshot from the Immortal Regiment website)
If you are looking for the burial place of your relatives who participated in the Second World War, I recommend that you also read this article:.
In it you will learn how to correctly create a request to the archive, how to formalize it, and where exactly to send it. In general, very useful information.
Well, that’s all for me, I hope I helped, if not find it, then at least gave useful “food” to start searching...
Instructions for finding information about soldiers who did not return from the front.
Every May 9th the “Immortal Regiment” is held. I would also like to participate, but I know almost nothing about my front-line relatives. Where to look for information?
More than 6.3 million soldiers died in the Great Patriotic War, and 4.5 million were missing. The fate of the dead and missing is not known to every family. The reasons for this can be completely different. But, fortunately, today this information can be found out, even if no documents or photographs of the soldier have been preserved. Most of the archival files from the period of the Great Patriotic War have already been digitized and stored in public databases on the Internet. With their help, you can trace the soldier’s combat path, learn about his wounds, awards, place and circumstances of death, and burial place.
My husband’s mother’s father was drafted to the front in July 1941 and died in one of the first battles,” shared Valentina Rogacheva, a journalist for the Svoykirovsky portal. - Mother received a funeral - “Dead.” But there was no burial place or any information at all. Then the village where my mother-in-law’s family lived was burned by the Germans during the retreat, and there was no information left about her father at all: no photographs, no documents - everything was burned. All her life she dreamed of learning at least something about her father. And so, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Victory, I learned in the news that the data of soldiers of the Great Patriotic War was being digitized. We started looking for information on the Internet. All we knew was his full name, year of birth and year of enlistment. In one of the public databases they found him in the lists of those buried in a mass grave on the territory of Belarus and a note stating that he died in battle. And although the place of burial is not entirely clear, it is now at least clear that he died not in captivity, but in battle, that he was buried, albeit in a mass grave.
So, all you need to know for the first stage of the search is the last name, first name and patronymic of the deceased or missing person, his date and place of birth. This can be found out from relatives. It is also advisable to know where the soldier was drafted.
What databases can you use?
There are four main databases with documents digitized from archives, which are constantly updated:
- . A generalized database of dead and missing people during the Great Patriotic War and the post-war period. The personal information they contain amounts to more than 20 million records;
- . The data bank contains 12.5 million records of awards of orders and medals “For Courage” (awarded to about 4.6 million people) and “For Military Merit” (awarded to more than 5.2 million people), as well as 22 million cards from the award card index and card indexes of awards of the Order of the Patriotic War, I and II degrees, for the 40th anniversary of the Victory;
- . The portal was created by the Ministry of Defense by decision of the Russian Pobeda organizing committee. It summarizes the data banks “Memorial” and “Feat of the People in the Great Patriotic War 1941 - 1945.” Here you can view historical maps and combat logs;
- - website of the all-Russian movement “Immortal Regiment”. Users independently upload data about their front-line relatives. At the moment, the Immortal Regiment database contains more than 400 thousand entries.
Screenshot from obd-memorial.ru
However, there are a few things to keep in mind. Firstly, the soldier’s name may have been written down incorrectly when joining the front (for example, Snigirev instead of Snegirev, Kiril instead of Kirill), the same goes for his date of birth (some conscripts themselves asked to change their age in order to get to the front). So if you can’t find a person by exact full name and date of birth, you can try to write the last name as it would be perceived by ear, and change the year of birth by a couple of years, up or down. Secondly, if you are looking for information on the place of conscription or birth, you need to remember that the administrative-territorial division of the regions of the RSFSR has changed. For example, Oparinsky, Lalsky and Podosinovsky districts were included in the Kirov region only in 1941, and before that they belonged to the Arkhangelsk region. You can check the administrative division on the website, and you can learn more about the intricacies of database searches.
In addition to databases on the Internet, there are also Books of Memory. These are large printed publications in several volumes, in which those killed during the Great Patriotic War are listed by name (alphabetically). There are such Books in every region: in Kirov you can ask for them in the Herzen Library. It may also be that your relative’s name is not in any of the databases or in the Book of Memory. In this case, you can try sending the official one by mail (!) to the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. But to do this, you need to know more accurate information about the deceased (for example, in which unit he served) and you will have to wait about six months for an answer.By the way, in rare cases you can also find letters from the front. For example, on websites and or in the digitized “Letters from the Front” (must be viewed manually). But you will have to search by last name and initials.
What if a soldier goes missing?
The count of missing people during the Great Patriotic War is still ongoing. Various researchers put the figure from 4 to 7 million people. It is difficult to determine the exact number, since in front-line reports the missing were sometimes combined with prisoners or included in lists with the total number of losses. About 500 thousand people were mobilized in the first days of the war, but were not included in the lists of troops. Some families received neither letters from the front nor “funeral” messages.
Information about the missing person can also be stored in one of the open databases. First of all, this is the same Memorial OBD. If you have information that a soldier was captured, try typing his first and last name in Latin letters (Ivan Petrov). In addition, there is a separate electronic database of prisoners of war - Saxon Memorials.Those captured by Germans are listed alphabetically. If the German camp in which the prisoner of war was held was liberated by Soviet troops, after the end of the war such a person could end up in the NKVD inspection and filtration camp. Alas, the electronic database of PFL prisoners is only available for natives of the Perm region. You can try to find filtration and verification files and captured German cards through the State Archives of the Kirov Region
Search teams can also help in finding information about missing persons. Since 1989, “Memory Watches” have been held in regions where military operations took place, during which search engines raise fallen soldiers, identify them, and then search for relatives throughout the country. Some people keep documents that help identify a person, in rare cases - letters to relatives or personal items with a signature (for example, a spoon). But, as a rule, it is possible to identify a person by a soldier’s medallion - a small metal capsule into which a piece of paper with the soldier’s data was inserted.
Photo: serovglobus.ru
It indicated the name, military rank, year and place of birth, place of mobilization and family address. An archive of records from all found medallions can be found on the Internet: they are recorded in special books - “Names from Soldiers’ Medallions”, which are published on the Russian Search Movement. By looking for a familiar name in the lists, you can find out when, where and by whom the fighter was found. If the record contains information that the relatives of the deceased have been found, you can request their contacts from the search team. You can also search for information by the fighter's last name.
And now briefly:
1. We find out from the relatives of the deceased his full name, place and date of birth, as well as the year and place of conscription.
2. We look for information in databases. First of all, through the Memorial OBD. We try to type the name with errors: the way they are perceived by ear.
3. We are looking for additional information: we find out the soldier’s combat path and awards on the “Memory of the People” website.
4. We are looking for digitized or decrypted front-line letters on the Internet by the name of the soldier.
Many still do not know the fate of the front-line soldiers from their families who did not return from the war. Today it is easier to find information than, say, 20 years ago - there are millions of documents in the Memorial ODB, the Feat of the People and the Memory of the People databases. However, it is not always possible for an inexperienced person to understand them. Experts told Sibnet.ru about the pitfalls of the search and gave advice on how to increase the chances of success.
According to official data, 27 million people died during the Great Patriotic War. More than 3.5 million are missing. Many are still unknown. Whether they died, were captured or remained alive and unharmed - their relatives, 73 years after the Victory, do not know.
In Soviet times, it was very difficult to find out information other than that contained in the “Books of Memory”. Most people did not have access to military archives and information could only be obtained through the district military commissariat, whose employees sent an official request to the Ministry of Defense. To this document it was necessary to attach various papers confirming the family connection with the front-line soldier. At the ministry, the request fell into a queue, so there was no hope for a quick response.
Recently, it has become easier to collect information; many databases have appeared with access to papers that were previously kept classified as “Secret”. But many people encounter difficulties when working with the OBD “Memorial”, “Feat of the People” or “Memory of the People”, since the search process involves some nuances that you need to know about.
Chaos in document flow
During the war years, especially at first, there was real confusion with documents, says historian Andrei Kulchitsky (Krasnoyarsk). There are known cases when three men from the same family and under the same surname were called up to the front. Everything happened quickly and the documents were drawn up in a hurry and were not always correct, and the data was unintentionally distorted. As a result, it turned out that three blood relatives went to war with different surnames. Subsequently, in all lists the soldiers were listed with new data. Interactive Victory Map: tell us about yours
A simple pencil is a reliable tool. It’s easier for them to work, ink won’t spill out of it, and the stylus can write even in severe frost. It also became an additional factor due to which the data was distorted. During the Second World War, papers were often filled out in pencil. The inscriptions were erased and faded faster. In the post-war period, census takers corrected records with a ballpoint pen; distortions inevitably occurred, for example, the letter “A” was changed to “O” and a completely different name, surname and locality were obtained.
Throughout the war, reforms took place in the army many times. The defeated troops were supplemented with fighters and assigned other numbers and names. It also happened that in unit reports a soldier was listed as dead, but in the hospital report he was simply wounded. Also, do not forget that many documents were lost in fires, some papers were lost, and some remained in the territories occupied by the Nazis.
And yet, much has survived and become accessible thanks to the development of Internet technologies. Contemporaries interested in the history of their family can trace the military path of their grandfather or great-grandfather, learn about his awards and exploits.
Main databases and search features
The first thing you need to turn to is the generalized Memorial data bank. The Russian Ministry of Defense launched this site in 2007. It contains information about Soviet soldiers killed, deceased and missing during the Great Patriotic War, as well as in the post-war period. For the archive, funds 58 and 33 (“Reports of combat units on irretrievable losses” and “Card index of Soviet prisoners of war”) and documents from the “Burial Passports” fund were processed.
The main body of documents consists of reports from combat units about irretrievable losses, funerals, documents from hospitals and medical battalions, trophy cards of Soviet prisoners of war, burial passports of Soviet soldiers and officers. Morse code is not afraid of jammers
Each entry in the “Memorial” contains the last name, first name, patronymic, date of birth, date of retirement and place of birth of the serviceman. The website contains scanned copies of all source documents containing information about persons. They often contain additional information, including the names and addresses of relatives to whom the funeral was sent.
You have a better chance of finding something in Memorial if you set precise search criteria. And the more initial information, the greater the chances of “catch” the front-line soldier’s page. “Unfortunately, the Memorial OBD does not have all the lists. It is advisable to know the number of the military unit or formation. Often they find their heroes by looking through the pages of unit documents, and not just by typing them into the search bar,” commented Kulchitsky.
On the “Immortal Regiment” website, it is advised to use an asterisk - “*” when searching for a fighter with distorted or inaccurate data. This method allows you to get all names containing a given criterion in the final list.
Another well-known portal is “The Feat of the People in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.” This data bank contains information about the awards of Soviet soldiers, as well as something about the fate of military personnel. There you can trace their military path, read descriptions of the exploits for which they were awarded.
The “Memory of the People” project united the OBD projects “Memorial” and “Feat of the People”. The portal contains 425 thousand archival documents of the Red Army, more than 100 thousand interactive maps with the locations of military units of the war years marked on them, 18 million records from award sheets and descriptions of the exploits of soldiers and officers, information about the places of primary burials of 5 million soldiers and officers.
In “Memory of the People”, the search results will contain not only records that strictly correspond to the specified search criteria, but also those that are similar to them.
Additional sources
Soldat.ru is the very first bank of information about military personnel killed in the Second World War, created about 15 years ago by volunteers and history buffs. The site contains documents, photographs, maps, and it is possible to correspond with other search engines. But, given the age of the site, it does not always work correctly. In case of errors in the search, administrators advise returning to the site in a few days and trying to find the information again. Despite its shortcomings, Soldat.ru is in some ways more unique than other databases.
“It was through this portal that I was able to find lists of hospitals that were not available anywhere. And recently these registers disappeared from this site too,” noted local historian Konstantin Golodyaev (Novosibirsk).
He also told what to do if a relative is not found in any of these databases. For example, you need to look at the “Book of Memory”; it is available in every region, sometimes even in electronic form. In the Novosibirsk region there is no network archive, but there is an electronic one "
“Missing in action” - many people received notices with this phrase during the war years. There were millions of them, and the fate of these defenders of the Motherland remained unknown for a long time. In most cases, it remains unknown today, but there is still some progress in clarifying the circumstances of the disappearance of the soldiers. Several circumstances contribute to this. Firstly, new technological capabilities have emerged to automate the search for required documents. Secondly, search teams carry out useful and necessary work. Thirdly, the archives of the Ministry of Defense have become more accessible. But even today, in the vast majority of cases, ordinary citizens do not know where to look for those missing in action during the Second World War. This article may help someone find out the fate of their loved ones.
Search difficulties
In addition to factors that contribute to success, there are also those that make it difficult to find those missing in action during the Second World War. Too much time has passed, and there is less and less material evidence of events. There are also no more people who can confirm this or that fact. In addition, disappearances were considered suspicious during and after the war. It was believed that a soldier or officer could be captured, which in those years was considered almost a betrayal. A Red Army soldier could go over to the enemy’s side, and this happened, unfortunately, often. The fates of traitors are mostly known. Collaborators who were caught and identified were tried and either executed or given long sentences. Others found refuge in distant lands. Those of them who have survived to this day usually do not want to be found.
Where to look for missing prisoners of war during WWII
The fates of many Soviet prisoners of war after the war developed differently. Some were pardoned by the Stalinist punitive machine, and they returned home safely, although for the rest of their lives they did not feel like full-fledged veterans and they themselves felt some guilt before the “normal” participants in the hostilities. Others were destined for a long journey through places of detention, camps and prisons, where they most often ended up on unsubstantiated charges. A number of soldiers released from captivity ended up in the American, French or British occupation zones. These, as a rule, were handed over by the allies to the Soviet troops, but there were exceptions. For the most part, our soldiers wanted to go home to their families, but rare realists understood what awaited them and asked for asylum. Not all of them were traitors - many simply did not want to cut down forest in the Far North or dig canals. In some cases, they find themselves, contact relatives and even assign them foreign inheritances. However, in this case, the search for those missing in action during the Second World War 1941-1945 can be difficult, especially if such a former prisoner changed his last name and does not want to remember his homeland. Well, people are different, as are their destinies, and it’s hard to condemn those who ate bitter bread in a foreign land.
Documentary trail
However, in the vast majority of cases the situation was much simpler and more tragic. In the initial period of the war, soldiers simply died in unknown cauldrons, sometimes together with their commanders, and there was no one to write reports on irreparable losses. Sometimes there were no bodies left, or it was impossible to identify the remains. It would seem, where to look for those missing in action during the Second World War with such confusion?
But there is always one thread left, by pulling which you can somehow unravel the history of the person of interest. The fact is that any person, and especially a military man, leaves behind a “paper” trail. His whole life is accompanied by documentary circulation: clothing and food certificates are issued for a soldier or officer, he is included in the In case of injury in a hospital, a medical record is opened for a soldier. Here is the answer to the question of where to look for missing people. The Second World War ended long ago, but the documents are kept. Where? In the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense, in Podolsk.
Central Archive of the Moscow Region
The application procedure itself is simple, and it is also free. The archives of the Ministry of Defense do not require money for the search for those missing in the Second World War of 1941-1945, and bear the costs of sending the answer. In order to make a request, you need to collect as much personal information as possible about who you want to find. The more there is, the easier it will be for Central Asian workers to decide where to look for those missing in action during the Great Patriotic War, in which storage and on which shelf the treasured document may lie.
First of all, you need your last name, first name and patronymic, place and date of birth, information about where you were called from, where you were sent and when. If any documentary evidence, notices or even personal letters have been preserved, then, if possible, they should be included (copies). Information about government awards, incentives, injuries and any other information related to service in the Armed Forces of the USSR will also not be superfluous. If you know in which the missing person served, the unit number and rank, then this should also be reported. In general, everything that is possible, but only reliable. All that remains is to put it all on paper, send it by letter to the Archive’s address and wait for a response. It won't be soon, but it will definitely happen. The people who work in the Central Election Commission of Moscow Region are obligatory and responsible.
Foreign archives
In the Second World War of 1941-1945, if the answer is negative from Podolsk, you should continue abroad. The hard times took Soviet soldiers languishing in captivity wherever they went. Their traces are found in Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Austria, Holland, Norway and, of course, Germany. The Germans kept documentation pedantically; a card was issued for each prisoner, equipped with a photograph and personal data, and if the documents were not damaged during hostilities or bombings, the answer would be found. The information concerns not only prisoners of war, but also those who were involved in forced labor. The search for missing persons in the Second World War sometimes makes it possible to find out about the heroic behavior of a relative in a concentration camp, and if not, then at least clarity will be brought into his fate.
The answer is usually laconic. Archives report on the settlement in the area of which a soldier of the Red or Soviet Army took his last battle. Information about the place of pre-war residence, the date from which the soldier was removed from all types of allowance, and the place of his burial are confirmed. This is due to the fact that searching for missing persons in the Great Patriotic War by last name, and even by first name and patronymic, can lead to ambiguous results. Additional confirmation can be provided by the data of relatives to whom the notification should have been sent. If the burial place is indicated as unknown, then it is usually a mass grave located near the specified settlement. It is important to remember that reports on casualties were often compiled at the battlefields, and they were written in not very legible handwriting. Searching for missing persons in WWII 1941-1945 can be difficult due to the fact that the letter “a” resembles an “o”, or something like that.
Search engines
In recent decades, the search movement has become widespread. Enthusiasts who want to clarify the question of the fate of millions of soldiers who laid down their lives for their Motherland are engaged in a noble task - they find the remains of fallen soldiers, determine by many signs whether they belong to one unit or another, and do everything to find out their last names. No one knows better than these people where to look for those missing in action during the Second World War. In the forests near Yelnya, in the swamps of the Leningrad region, near Rzhev, where fierce battles took place, they conduct careful excavations, handing over to their native land its defenders with military honors. Search teams send information to government officials and the military, who update their databases.
Electronic means
Today, everyone who wants to find out the fate of their glorious ancestors has the opportunity to look into the commander’s reports from the battlefields. And you can do this without leaving your home. On the website of the Ministry of Defense archive you can familiarize yourself with unique documents and verify the veracity of the information provided. These pages emanate living history; they seem to create a bridge between eras. Searching for missing persons in the Great Patriotic War by last name is not difficult, the interface is convenient and accessible to everyone, including the elderly. In any case, we need to start with the lists of the dead. After all, the “funeral” could simply not come, and for many decades the soldier was considered missing.
Not everyone returned from the front in 1945; the ancestors of many of us are still on the lists of missing persons. But we continue to look for those who gave their lives for us and gave us clear skies above our heads.
Memorial
Thanks to the document, you can find out when and where the WWII participant died, as well as the primary burial place and the place of reburial (if there is one).
Memory of the People
If your relative is listed as missing, you can search for information about his fate in the database of Soviet prisoners of war by Nazi Germany.
What I was able to find: by searching on Google “Myshbor station war” I was able to find information that Mikhail Vasilyevich Batukhtin fell in battle with German bombers on August 16, 1942 near the Myshbor railway station. From report No. 24967 on irretrievable losses dated September 22, 1942, we learn that 8 soldiers were killed during the bombing. All of them, including my great-grandfather, were buried here. Unfortunately, the mass grave could not be found on the Internet.
Maria Batukhtina
