Search for relatives who fought on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. The history of the Great Patriotic War in the fate of my grandfather Grandfather during World War II

In the Russian capital, preparations are being completed for the large-scale commemorative event “Immortal Regiment”, which will take place on Red Square following the May 9 parade in Moscow.

The Immortal Regiment procession on the day of the celebration of the anniversary of the Great Victory promises to be a grandiose event designed to give thousands of Russians from all over the country the opportunity to talk about their front-line relatives.

Currently, the website of the Immortal Regiment project has collected more than 200 thousand (think about these numbers!) portraits and even more - stories of those people who participated in that terrible Great Patriotic War.

Today, each of us must remember our roots and know what our relatives did for the Great Victory, which is why I decided to contribute to the formation of the “Immortal Regiment”.

In the family archive, my dad and I managed to find only one photograph of my grandfather, a participant in the Great Patriotic War, Ivan Kuzmich Makagonov - it was taken in one of the cities of Germany. Unfortunately, I didn’t know any other information about my grandfather.

I learned the biography of my grandfather. I even found a map where the cities of the unit where he served were marked. And most importantly, I found out that my grandfather reached Berlin!

In addition, grandfather was awarded medals and orders!

I am sure that thanks to such Internet portals and the great contribution of search organizations that conduct excavations in places of war, hundreds of residents of our country will find the stories of their grandfathers and great-grandparents, grandmothers and great-grandmothers who fought for the Great Victory!

Remembering your origins and your ancestors is important and necessary not only for yourself, but also for the future generation. And no matter how history is being rewritten in European countries, our duty is to protect and honor the defenders of our Motherland from fascism.

Eternal memory to all those who are no longer with us.
We are proud of you and remember you, Grandfather!

We have been keeping the memory of the Great War of the 20th century and its heroes for more than 70 years. We pass it on to our children and grandchildren, trying not to lose a single fact or surname. Almost every family was affected by this event; many fathers, brothers, husbands never returned. Today we can find information about them thanks to the painstaking work of military archives staff and volunteers who devote their free time to searching for soldiers’ graves. How to do this, how to find a WWII participant by last name, information about his awards, military ranks, place of death? We could not ignore such an important topic, we hope that we can help those who are looking and want to find.

Losses in the Great Patriotic War

It is still unknown exactly how many people left us during this great human tragedy. After all, the counting did not begin immediately; only in 1980, with the advent of glasnost in the USSR, historians, politicians, and archive staff were able to begin official work. Until this time, scattered data that were beneficial at that time were received.

After celebrating Victory Day in 1945, J.V. Stalin said that we had buried 7 million Soviet citizens. He spoke, in his opinion, about everyone, both about those who died during the battle and about those who were taken prisoner by the German occupiers. But he missed a lot, did not say about the rear employees who stood at the machine from morning until night, falling dead from exhaustion. I forgot about the sentenced saboteurs, traitors to the motherland, ordinary residents and siege survivors of Leningrad who died in small villages; missing persons. Unfortunately, they can be listed for a long time.
Later L.I. Brezhnev provided different information, he reported 20 million dead.

Today, thanks to the decoding of secret documents and search work, the numbers are becoming real. Thus, you can see the following picture:

Combat losses received directly at the front during battles amount to about 8,860,400 people.
Non-combat losses (from illnesses, wounds, accidents) - 6,885,100 people.

However, these figures do not yet correspond to complete reality. War, and even this kind of war, is not only the destruction of the enemy at the cost of one’s own life. These are broken families - unborn children. This is a huge loss of the male population, thanks to which it will not soon be possible to restore the balance necessary for good demography.

These are diseases, hunger in the post-war years and death from it. This is rebuilding the country again, again in many ways, at the cost of people’s lives. All of them also need to be taken into account when doing calculations. All of them are victims of terrible human vanity, whose name is war.

How to find a participant in the Great Patriotic War 1941 - 1945 by last name?

There is no better memory for the stars of victory than the desire of the future generation to know. The desire to save information for others, to avoid such repetition. How to find a WWII participant by last name, where to find possible information about grandfathers and great-grandfathers, fathers who took part in battles, knowing their last name? Especially for this purpose, there are now electronic repositories that everyone can access.

obd-memorial.ru - here contains official data containing reports of units about losses, funerals, trophy cards, as well as information about rank, status (died, was killed or disappeared, where), scanned documents.
moypolk.ru is a unique resource containing information about home front workers. The very ones without whom we would not have heard the important word “Victory”. Thanks to this site, many have already been able to find or help find lost people.

The work of these resources is not only to search for great people, but also to collect information about them. If you have any, please report it to the administrators of these sites. In this way, we will do a great common cause - we will preserve memory and history.

Archive of the Ministry of Defense: search by last name of WWII participants

Another one is the main, central, largest project - https://archive.mil.ru/. The documents preserved there are mostly isolated and remained intact due to the fact that they were taken to the Orenburg region.

Over the years of work, CA staff have created an excellent reference apparatus showing the contents of archival accumulations and funds. Now its goal is to provide people with access to possible documents through electronic computing technology. Thus, a website has been launched where you can try to find a military man who participated in the Second World War, knowing his last name. How to do it?

On the left side of the screen, find the “memory of the people” tab.
Indicate his full name.
The program will give you the available information: date of birth, awards, scanned documents. Everything that is in the files for a given person.
You can set a filter on the right, selecting only the sources you want. But it's better to choose everything.
On this site it is possible to look at military operations on a map and the path of the unit in which the hero served.

This is a unique project in its essence. There is no longer such a volume of data collected and digitized from all existing and available sources: card indexes, electronic memory books, medical battalion documents and command directories. In truth, as long as such programs and the people who provide them exist, the memory of the people will be eternal.

If you didn’t find the right person there, don’t despair, there are other sources, maybe they’re not as large-scale, but that doesn’t make them any less informative. Who knows in which folder the information you need might be lying around.

Participants of the Second World War: search by last name, archive and awards

Where else can you look? There are more narrowly focused repositories, for example:

dokst.ru. As we said, those who were captured also became victims of this terrible war. Their fate may be displayed on foreign websites like this one. Here in the database there is everything about Russian prisoners of war and the burials of Soviet citizens. You only need to know the last name, you can look at the lists of captured people. The Documentation Research Center is located in the city of Dresden, and it was he who organized this site to help people from all over the world. You can not only search the site, but also send a request through it.
Rosarkhiv archives.ru is an agency that is an executive authority that keeps records of all government documents. Here you can make a request either online or by telephone. A sample electronic appeal is available on the website in the “appeals” section, left column on the page. Some services here are provided for a fee; a list of them can be found in the “archive activities” section. With this in mind, be sure to ask whether you will need to pay for your request.
rgavmf.ru - a naval reference book about the destinies and great deeds of our sailors. In the “orders and applications” section there is an email address for processing documents left for storage after 1941. By contacting the archive staff, you can get any information and find out the cost of such a service; most likely it is free.

WWII awards: search by last name

To search for awards and feats, an open portal has been organized, dedicated specifically to this www.podvignaroda.ru. Information is published here about 6 million cases of awards, as well as 500,000 unawarded medals and orders that never reached the recipient. Knowing the name of your hero, you can find a lot of new things about his fate. The posted scanned documents of orders and award sheets, data from registration files, will complement your existing knowledge.

Who else can I contact for information about awards?

On the website of the Central Election Commission of the Ministry of Defense, in the section “Awards are looking for their heroes,” a list of awarded soldiers who did not receive them was published. Additional names can be obtained by phone.
rkka.ru/ihandbook.htm - encyclopedia of the Red Army. It published some lists of the assignment of senior officer ranks and special ranks. The information may not be as extensive, but existing sources should not be neglected.
https://www.warheroes.ru/ is a project created with the aim of popularizing the exploits of the defenders of the Fatherland.

A lot of useful information, which sometimes is not found anywhere, can be found on the forums of the above sites. Here people share valuable experiences and tell their own stories that can help you too. There are many enthusiasts who are ready to help everyone in one way or another. They create their own archives, conduct their own research, and can also be found only on forums. Don't shy away from this type of search.

WWII veterans: search by last name

oldgazette.ru is an interesting project created by ideological people. A person who wants to find information enters data, it can be anything: full name, name of awards and date of receipt, line from a document, description of an event. This combination of words will be calculated by search engines, but not just on websites, but in old newspapers. Based on the results, you will see everything that was found. Maybe this is where you will be lucky, you will find at least a thread.
It happens that we search among the dead and find among the living. After all, many returned home, but due to the circumstances of that difficult time, they changed their place of residence. To find them, use the website pobediteli.ru. This is where people searching send letters asking for help in finding their fellow soldiers, random encounters during the war. The project's capabilities allow you to select a person by name and region, even if he lives abroad. If you see it on these lists or similar, you need to contact the administration and discuss this issue. Kind, attentive staff will definitely help and do everything they can. The project does not interact with government organizations and cannot provide personal information: telephone number, address. But it is quite possible to publish your search request. More than 1,000 people have already been able to find each other this way.
1941-1945.at Veterans do not abandon their own. Here on the forum you can communicate, make inquiries among the veterans themselves, perhaps they have met and have information about the person you need.

The search for the living is no less relevant than the search for dead heroes. Who else will tell us the truth about those events, about what they experienced and suffered. About how they greeted victory, the very first, the most expensive, sad and happy at the same time.

Additional sources

Regional archives were created throughout the country. Not so large, often standing on the shoulders of ordinary people, they have preserved unique single records. Their addresses are on the website of the movement to perpetuate the memory of the victims. And:

https://www.1942.ru/ - “Seeker”.
https://iremember.ru/ - memories, letters, archives.
https://www.biograph-soldat.ru/ - international biographical center.

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...

Only by knowing the history of your family can you be a full member of society. It is important to remember and honor the memory of grandfathers and great-grandfathers who defended their Motherland at the cost of their lives. However, it often happens that information about a deceased or missing relative is not preserved in the memory of descendants. In this case, you can try to restore the information by referring to archival documents.

Search for a grandfather who participated in the Second World War

With the development of digital technologies, the search for a grandfather who died in the war can be carried out independently, using specialized Internet resources. To do this, just enter a query in the Internet search engine, for example: “search for Grandfather of the Great Patriotic War.” If you had several front-line soldiers in your family, and you would like to know who fought where, in which sectors of the front they served, or in which military operations they participated, you can expand your request. In this case, you need to enter a query with the following content: “where did my grandfather fight, search by last name for free” or, for example: “where did my grandfather fight, search by last name.”

The most informative and reliable are archival sites created with the support of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, or created by the Russian Historical Society. If you are wondering: “Where did my grandfather fight?” - the search should begin by viewing the resource. This site contains information about Soviet soldiers who died or went missing during the fighting or in the post-war period. You can find a war hero by name, year of birth and rank;
You can find information about the awards that your relative received during the war using the electronic services . This database is interesting because it contains scanned original documents - awards orders and accompanying documents. Be sure to save these documents on your computer, print them, if possible, show these documents to your relatives - everyone should know about the heroism of their ancestors!;
If during the war one of your relatives was captured by the Nazis, was taken to German territory, or his traces were lost in the occupied territories, a search in .

Personally, I found it on the site "Feat of the people" information about my grandfather (I post a picture below) and great-grandfather. It was very nice to read about their exploits. It’s interesting that even my dad and his sister didn’t really know why my grandfather received the medal “For Courage” in 1943 - he didn’t like to talk about the war at all. On the site "Memorial" I found information about my grandfather’s two missing brothers and another great-grandfather who died in the war in February 1945. Eternal memory to my glorious ancestors!

This is what information about a soldier looks like on the website: (this is my grandfather's card):

And this is the site and a card of my great-grandfather, who disappeared:

Do you have information about your grandparents who defended their homeland? during the war? Tell us in the comments below the article about how you found out who fought where, and what you feel when you remember your heroic ancestors?

Watch the most complete surviving video recording of that same Victory Parade, which passed through the streets of our capital in the memorable May 1945.

It should be noted that searching for the burial place or battle path of one’s grandfather/great-grandfather is a long, sometimes difficult, and sometimes expensive task. From the very beginning, you need to prepare yourself for a long, painstaking work of collecting information and analyzing it.

However, in general it is a simple and straightforward process.

Data collection

Specify the surname, first name, patronymic, year of birth, place of birth, place of residence before the war, military registration and enlistment office to which you were drafted, address of relatives, place of service, military rank, party affiliation, if there are letters - find the field mail number in them, if we are looking for a dead or missing person missing - check the date of the last known letter.

Read the letters carefully, they may contain important information: about the type of troops, about the military unit, any details of movements.

Branch of service, military unit - regiment, division, army - this information is sometimes the key to searching, for example, burials

Primary search

The base is unique, there are no analogues in the world. About 14 million sheets of archival documents were scanned and posted. Work to fill the database continues. Therefore, do not be surprised if there is no data on your relative yet.

Here you can find all possible (taking into account the fact that the database is filling up) references to a person: Books of memory, reports of losses, lists of those buried, etc.

The base contains almost all military graves, where soldiers and commanders of the Red Army are buried. From Murmansk to Crete.

Additional information can be obtained on the Feat of the People website. There is information about awards there.

If you know about the awards of a relative, then from the award documents you can find out information about the military unit, place of birth, etc. And of course about exploits.

In addition, “Feat of the People” has a section on the Geography of War. In this section you can find information about the combat path of the military unit.

If you want to find out where your grandfather fought and lived to see the end of the war, this is the main tool. But only if he was awarded.

Books of Memory

In every region of the Soviet Union, including Ukraine, a multi-volume “Book of Memory” was published. The Book contains information about those who did not return from the war. But! Information at the time of publication of the Book, and the information that the regional commissariat had at that time. Some Books have been reprinted.

The “Book of Memory” is kept in the district military registration and enlistment office. It is necessary to contact at the place of conscription your relative...

There is an easier way to access the “Book of Memory” - contact the Veterans Council. There, active grandparents will give you the “Book” and give you some tea.

Books of Memory can also be electronic. Then you need to look for a link to them on the websites of the central authorities of the region.

Most of the Books of Memory have been digitized and are located in the Memorial Database. In the "Advanced Search" section you can search for these Books.

Request to TsAMO

If the previous search did not provide the required results, send by registered mail request to the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense - 142100, Moscow region, Podolsk, st. Kirova, house 74.

The request looks like this:

======================================

142100, Podolsk, Moscow region

Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation

REQUEST QUESTIONNAIRE

on the search and establishment of the fate of a serviceman

1. Last name, first name, patronymic (of the wanted person)

________________________

2. Year and place of birth (region, district, village, city)______________________________

3. Where did you live and work before conscription (indicate the detailed address and name of the institution, enterprise) _________________________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________________

4. Which military registration and enlistment office was drafted, when and to what unit was sent _____________________

___________________________________________________________________________

5. Military rank ______________________________

6. Branch of troops (by conscription and service) ________________________________________________

7. Party affiliation _________________________________

8. When written communication ceased (year, month, date) _________________________

9. Address of the military unit at the last place of service (last letter) ___________

10. Who is requesting (last name, first name, patronymic, relationship, home address)

___________________________________________________________________________

Applicant's signature - _________________

The reception was conducted by __________________________

“______”_________20___

Request in the form of a word file.

=============================================================

After some time, you receive an official certificate about the burial place.

It will read:

1. Killed (indicating the place of burial)

2. Killed (without indicating the place of burial)

3. Died from wounds (indicating the place of burial)

4. Died from wounds (no indication of burial place)

5. Missing.

If the burial place is known, then take one more step:

After receiving the official certificate, write a request to the regional military registration and enlistment office for the burial place (depending on the accuracy of the indication).

To the head of the military registration and enlistment office of the Demyansky district of the Novgorod region

We ask you to establish the burial place _______full name______, check it using burial passports based on the information we have from

1) Notice of death ____________

2) OBD Memorial (list of documents)_____________

I am attaching copies of documents___________

If there is no data on the full name in the burial passport, please enter the full name in the burial passport and immortalize his name

Copies do not need to be certified; regular copies are sufficient.

If the certificate indicates a specific burial, then look for it using the Memorial OBD - Advanced search, Search for burials

If the burial place is unknown, then do the following:

Died from wounds

A request to the archive of military medical documents of the Military Medical Museum of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (191180, St. Petersburg, Lazaretny Lane, 2) and a repeated request to TsAMO with a request to clarify the location of the hospital for the period of death of the wanted person.

Very often, the passport of military graves (if it is hospital) contains information about the hospital.

If there is any information about the hospital, then - a directory of the deployment of Red Army hospitals in 1941-1945.

Killed or missing.

This is where the fun begins. You should know the unit in which your grandfather fought. This will be in a certificate from TsAMO or in the joint Memorial database. Your task is to establish the combat path of the division/brigade/regiment. Not an army, but a division/brigade/regiment.

If there are letters and they indicate a field mail number, then we decipher this number.

If part is known, then further - memoirs, maps, reports on military operations, and so on. You can search TsAMO for reports and orders for a narrow period of time. It is quite possible, for example, to establish the fate of an individual tank, and from aerial photographs to suggest the place of its destruction, and after interviewing the local population, to establish a previously unknown grave. But this is a piece of work, and most likely a local search team can do it.

Burials

Sometimes, the military registration and enlistment office cannot give a complete picture, especially for the battles of 1941-1942. The maximum that they can give in this case is a map of the burials of the area. But there could be dozens of them.

Keep in mind that the burials were enlarged. Consolidation campaigns have been carried out in the country 2-3 times. They are still being carried out, the main reason being the inaccessibility of transport and the impossibility of care.

The history of burials can also be traced from the Memorial ODB. Sometimes, lists of burials are posted on official websites.

It may also be that the burial was transferred only on paper. And where it really is - everyone has forgotten.

The mass grave, created in 1941 and noted in the documents, may simply “dissolve” in the area during 2 years of occupation. Or it may be that the person you are looking for will be listed in several graves.

Museums.

School and local history. No matter how strange it may seem to someone, school museums exist and are actively working in specific departments and parts. The most complete list of school military history museums is located.

Search teams

You need to contact the search team of your area/city, as well as the search team of the area where your relative died/went missing.

A search in Yandex like “Demyansk search party” usually also finds everything.

If there is no information on the Internet, call the youth affairs department of the desired region and they will tell you all the available information on the search teams of the region.