Find the combat path of a WWII participant by last name. How to find a WWII veteran by first and last name? Review of useful resources on the Internet

How to find your relative - a participant in the Great Patriotic War by last name, how to find out information about his awards, military ranks, military path and place of death? This memo will help you collect the most detailed information about your ancestor, a participant in the Second World War.

1 Sort out family archives

Ask your family and friends, sort through family archives and write down all the information which you will recognize. Pay special attention to letters and official documents from the front - the postal stamp contains the number of the military unit.

The transcript can be found on the website www.soldat.ru

2 Consult Databases

First of all, check the electronic archives:

Enter the veteran's information in the search fields.

If you don't find anything - try different spellings of your first name, last name and place of birth.

If the surname is common, use the advanced search and enter additional information.

Check your databases regularly- they are constantly updated and new information about your soldier may appear.

Look beyond the search results that appear at the top! Please read the entire document for more information. If the document is multi-page, open the title page - there may be a part number there. Knowing the unit number, you can determine the unit's combat path.

Check out Memory Books— they are stored in military registration and enlistment offices, archives, and local history museums. Information about soldiers was entered into the books according to three criteria: place of birth, place of conscription and place of burial. If there is no information, contact the Central Museum of the Great Patriotic War (Moscow, Pobeda Square, 3, index 121096) - all books published before 1996 are stored there.

3 Send a request to the official archives

in the metric book (stored in regional archives)
in civil registration records (stored in regional archives or in civil registry offices)
in household books (stored in the archives of district administrations)
in personal files (kept at companies)

4 Make a request to the military registration and enlistment office

Do written request to the military registration and enlistment office— indicate in it all the information you have about the veteran (full name, year and place of birth, place of conscription, rank, etc.).

If possible, visit the military registration and enlistment office in person. Before visiting, be sure to:

Copy the sheets of the draft books containing information about soldiers drafted on the same day as your relative.
Check all names through the Memorial OBD website (www.obd-memorial.ru)

There is a possibility that they were sent to the same place as your relative.

5 Find out where your relative served

Knowing the unit number (division, battalion, etc.), you can understand exactly where and when your ancestor fought. The battle path can be traced on the “Memory of the People” website

1 Sort out family archives

The transcript can be found on the website www.soldat.ru

2 Consult Databases

First of all, check the electronic archives:

Enter the veteran's information in the search fields.

If you don't find anything - try different spellings of your first name, last name and place of birth.

If the surname is common, use the advanced search and enter additional information.

Check your databases regularly- they are constantly updated and new information about your soldier may appear.

3 Send a request to the official archives

in the metric book (stored in regional archives)
in civil registration records (stored in regional archives or in civil registry offices)
in household books (stored in the archives of district administrations)
in personal files (kept at companies)

4 Make a request to the military registration and enlistment office

If possible, visit the military registration and enlistment office in person. Before visiting, be sure to:

Copy the sheets of the draft books containing information about soldiers drafted on the same day as your relative.
Check all names through the Memorial OBD website (www.obd-memorial.ru)

There is a possibility that they were sent to the same place as your relative.

5 Find out where your relative served

Knowing the unit number (division, battalion, etc.), you can understand exactly where and when your ancestor fought. The battle path can be traced on the “Memory of the People” website

Now Russians have a much better chance of finding a relative missing on the battlefields than, for example, 20 years ago, when military-patriotic search organizations did not exist and state military archives were inaccessible. So, how exactly can you search for missing relatives or loved ones? You can begin your own investigation by searching military archives or using electronic databases.

Before you start searching

Collect as much information as possible about the person you want to find.

Any information will be useful:

Date and place of birth;

The place where the person was sent to serve is also important! - the place where he was drafted into the army and by which military registration and enlistment office he was drafted;

Military unit number;

Branch of the military;

Any notifications from the army, as well as any (even unofficial) notifications about possible capture;

Personal letters from the front, especially those that contain information about the number of a field post office or military unit.

This data can make it easier to search for data in archival documentation.

Electronic databases

1. The main resource of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, which has collected as much information as possible about the defenders of the Fatherland who died or went missing during the war and post-war period, is "United Data Bank "Memorial" .

Here, information from 38 archival files of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the Central Naval Archive, the Russian State Military Archive, the State Archive of the Russian Federation, regional archives of the Russian Archive and 42.2 thousand passports of existing military burial places in the Russian Federation and abroad is collected and systematized. On this site you can find out the burial place of a warrior and see a digitized record of a person from a file cabinet. This resource will also help you find medical workers and civilians who were at the front or were captured.

2. There are various unofficial archives collected by individuals or organizations. You can find many links to such databases on the Internet, but it should be remembered that archives not under the jurisdiction of the state cannot provide an official answer to the request. However, such sources of information can help in finding a person missing in war. For example, you can use the resource Soldat.ru or website “Combat actions of the Red Army in the Second World War” .

Russian archives

If you cannot find information about a missing relative via the Internet, you may be able to find the data yourself using specialized archives.

You can contact the Russian State military archive in Moscow or, if you don’t know exactly which state archive may contain the information you need, find your way according to the guidebook or archive list .

In addition, you can consult the following archives for information:

You can try to find archival data yourself, but you need to keep in mind that it is not as easy as it seems at first glance - the file cabinets are huge, you will have to search for the necessary documents using inventories, and this can take a lot of time. In addition, in order to enter the reading room, you will need to write an application in which you will need to indicate your passport data and the purpose of collecting information, as well as indicate which documents you may need.

German archives

You can try to find information about German prisoners of war and soldiers who died on German territory in German archives. Thus, the main archive of Germany is the state archive, the main building of which is located in the city of Kobletz. There are branches of this archive in Berlin, Freiburg and some other German cities.

Make a request for information from the state archive.

In addition, there are local city archives, which may also contain information about Soviet military prisoners held in captivity. For example, in the city of Dresden you can try contacting the Documentation Center at the Association

You tell me: “Why look?

Those who were killed here have long disappeared,

Those who could have been waiting for them have also left,

And all of them have long been forgotten..."

From the song of the search engines

Almost every family in our country has relatives who went missing during the Great Patriotic War. Some scattered information is kept in the family, some still have photographs. But when you see the name of a loved one in a report from the Memorial base, for example, for some reason you more clearly imagine a train under fire, trenches... And it seems that if you find out at least something else, your soldier will not be so lonely in his unknown grave. And you hope that the soldiers who have not returned will not be left without prayers.

Dmitry Aleksandrovich Belov, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Director of the Research Center for Regional History of the Volgograd State Academy of Postgraduate Education, Vice-President of the International Charitable Foundation “Battle of Stalingrad” told “Foma” about where and how to look for information about the burial place of a soldier of the Great Patriotic War "

STEP 1. WHERE TO START

The fastest way to find your relative who died in the Great Patriotic War is the generalized Memorial data bank, the database of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense (TsAMO):

To do this:

1. We go to the website of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, where the most complete electronic database in our country of those killed in the Second World War is located: www.obd-memorial.ru

2. Fill in the columns “Last name”, “First name”, “Patronymic name”, “Year of birth” of your deceased relative:

3. Ideally, we get a result of several lines with more or less complete information and continue to study the materials in the direction of specifying the exact location of the burial.

4. In the surname or first name, or patronymic, we change the letters, selecting them in such a way as if they were written by an illiterate person or the original document is poorly readable and there are alternative reading options. And you may come across additional documents from the archive's database.

At this stage of the search, to begin with, a last name, first name, patronymic, year of birth, preferably a title is enough. If he is Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov, then, of course, it will be more difficult. You have to be persistent to make sure that this is exactly the person you need, you will need details - full name of wife, mother, name of the village, city where he was called from, place of birth (in accordance with the administrative-territorial division of the USSR in the pre-war years - approx. ed.).

It is worth paying special attention to the fourth point. There are some really stupid spelling mistakes in the database. My great-grandfather's name was Andrei Kirillovich. I wrote “Kirillovich” like a normal person with two letters, and then I thought that not everyone knows how to spell Kirillovich...

Kirillovich typed with one “l” and immediately found the burial place. Also Filippovich - maybe Filippovich, and with one “p”, and so on. It is also better to try to change the letters in both the last name and first name in case they were written by an illiterate person or the original document is difficult to read. Such points must be taken into account.

Ideally, the result of your search should be a document about the burial place of a relative and information in which military unit (army, division or regiment) he fought.

If there is no information, one can hope that the search teams that are looking for and burying the remains of soldiers will find something. If the search engines managed to find someone, they contact the military registration and enlistment office and look for relatives themselves.

But you can continue the search on your own. In this case, it is necessary to collect the maximum possible amount of information in order to begin a qualitatively new stage of the search.

What can help us with this?

STEP 2. COLLECT ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Have the letters survived?

The most important thing in letters is the number of the field postal station (FPS) on the stamp of the envelope. You can use it to determine the number of a division, regiment, etc.

A powerful resource: a lot of documents on military topics, memoirs, collections. If the division number and the fighting area are known, then you can at least find a description in general terms.

Database "Feat of the People"

TsAMO project.

This is a database where there is information about soldiers awarded medals. The database is not yet complete; not all documents have been scanned yet.

This resource has several hospital databases. Dial the hospital number, press Enter and see which division it served.

And there are many more reference books on types of troops, shoulder straps, and weapons.

But the most valuable thing is on Soldat.ru forum http://soldat.ru/forum/

If you register on it, you can get advice from completely unfamiliar historians, specialists, anyone who is interested in searching, and military registration and enlistment office employees.

To register, at the top of this site (see the lower right corner in the picture above), you need to click the “Registration” button. Next you need to fill out the registration form.

Then create a topic (it’s better to name it briefly, for example, “No.__-th Infantry Division. Looking for a relative”). After this, your request will be able to be read by anyone who visits this site. Don't hesitate! There will be enough such strangers and caring people. Everyone will help you with the information they have. Some will answer, advise, consult, others will recommend sites, scan the documents you need, excerpts from books, etc.

Other resources

There are many more resources that publish interviews with veterans and biographies. But it is worth considering that these sources, as a rule, do not represent historical value either for the researcher or for those who want to use this material in their search.

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...

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 achievement. 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 date and place of birth of the person, 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!

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.