Information technology opens up enormous opportunities for us. Now we can find a person via the Internet without leaving home. Some people use this chance to find out at least something about the participants in the war of 1941-1945. After all, how many destinies were then lost, missing. Today, relatives are trying to restore information and find out the details of what happened. Previously, it was very difficult to find a veteran of the Patriotic War by last name or other information, but now it is quite possible. There are many electronic resources and databases for this. We will write about them below.
Where can I find information about participants in World War II?
Get ready for a difficult task to solve. Below we list the largest electronic resources, created with government support and central archives:
- “Memorial” is a project that is a generalized repository. There are more than 33 million records about the fate of soldiers and burial places. A search on the site is carried out both by a person’s last name and by any other indicators. You can indicate your year of birth, place or rank. You can additionally use the " Advanced Search" By default, the system will work with summary records compiled for each person from available documents;
- “Memory of the People” is another project dedicated to the heroes of the Second World War. To search, you need to enter your full name in the line located at the top of the page " Heroes of War" You can also use the following points: “ Combat operations», « Military graves», « Parts documents" In them you can see the addresses of burial places and the names of fallen soldiers, material about military operations, the fate of its participants, etc.
Both sites are easy to use. A colossal number of unique documents are stored here in electronic form, which are not found anywhere else.
Search for WWII veterans by awards
The electronic archive “Feat of the People” contains information about more than 6 million awards issued for the capture, defense, and liberation of cities and territories.
You can search both by full name and by dates and names of orders. And if you have any documents in your hands, you can enter text from them into the appropriate fields using the button “ Advanced Search" Then the resource will issue all award sheets and orders in which this set of proposals appears.
You can also use the portal “About Awards.ru”. It contains more than 20 million awards records.
List of military archives and departments
There is an option to go directly to military storage facilities and departments and inquire there:
In addition, projects on which you can read old wartime newspapers. They often posted texts with photographs about the achievements of our troops at the front, in order to raise patriotism among the people, and listed the names of heroes and leaders:
You may have to spend a lot of time, but the more resources you visit, the more applications you leave, the more likely you will be successful.
How to find those killed or missing in the war of 1941-1945?
Here we list resources where you can find out about the fate of people left on the battlefields:
- Project "Archive Battalion" created with the aim of restoring information about participants in the wars of the 20th century. You can leave a request on the website with a request to conduct research on the exploits of your hero, where and how he fought and died. It is also possible to contact the office directly to the employees. The address is here;
- Book of memory "Immortal Regiment". The platform allows you to obtain information about Muscovites, both those who returned home and those who died;
- Electronic memorial “Remember About” is a social site for those who are trying to preserve the memory of relatives and friends who participated in the Second World War. You can create a page in memory of a veteran here, tell his story, publish photographs and documents. And also do a search;
- On site
With the help of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, an electronic bank “Feat of the People in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945” was created. which is located at podvignaroda.mil.ru, where you can find information about the exploits and awards of your fathers, grandfathers and grandmothers by first and last name. The search takes place using military archival documents that have been digitized and entered into the site database.
How and where to look?
The “Feat of the People” website is the most complete and up-to-date database on participants in the Great Patriotic War - there is information about almost all soldiers. At the first stage of digitization from 2010 to 2015, 30 million records were made on the awarding of orders and medals “For Courage” and “For Military Merit”, as well as information on 22 million Orders of the Patriotic War I and II degrees for the 40th anniversary of the Victory, and also 200 thousand archival files with a total volume of 100 million sheets!
Such a huge amount of work was done for the main goal of the project:
The main goals of the project are to perpetuate the memory of all heroes of the Victory, regardless of rank, scale of feat, award status, military-patriotic education of youth using the example of the military exploits of their fathers, as well as creating a factual basis to counter attempts to falsify the history of the War.
There are 3 main search options:
- Search for people and their awards
- Search for decrees and awards orders
- Search data by place and time
To find a person, use the first search option, to do this, open the website http://podvignaroda.mil.ru/ and go to the “People and Awards” tab and enter the last name and first name of the person whose awards you want to find.
To search for decrees and data on the location of military operations, we recommend using another site - “Memory of the People”, which will be discussed below.
If you want to search by award number, you will not be able to do this, because... Award numbers are not indicated in the award documents.
If information about a person’s fate is not known, then the “Feat of the People” website will not suit you, because... it does not contain data on the dead or missing. Such information should be searched on the website www.obd-memorial.ru, trying different spellings of surnames and names because wartime documents may have contained errors in the name or date of birth.
Let us remind you that the initiator of this project is the Department for the Development of Information and Telecommunication Technologies of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, and technical support is provided by the ELAR company. Thanks to them for this site!
The information is taken from two funds: the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (CA MO) and the Central Naval Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (CVMA).
Memory of the people
Later, a more modern website was opened https://pamyat-naroda.ru/ “Memory of the People” with documents of the Second World War, which has a more pleasant design and, most importantly, more information, maps and historical data.
With the help of the “Memory of the People” portal, it has become even easier to reconstruct the military path of your grandfather, find documents about injuries and awards.
The People's Memory project was implemented in accordance with the decision of the Russian Victory Organizing Committee of July 2013, supported by the instructions of the President and the Decree of the Russian Government in 2014. The project provides for the publication on the Internet of archival documents and documents about the losses and awards of soldiers and officers of the First World War, the development of the projects previously implemented by the Russian Ministry of Defense about the Second World War OBD Memorial and Feat of the People into one project - Memory of the People.
On the page https://pamyat-naroda.ru/ops/ you can familiarize yourself with the plans of 226 operations with detailed diagrams on the map. Each page about the operation contains the names of commanders and numbers of military units, as well as a description of the result of the operation.
Figure 1 - Modern map of combat operations during the Second World War.
On the page https://pamyat-naroda.ru/memorial/ you can find military graves in your city. Just enter the name of the city and click the “Find” button. In total, it contains information about 30,588 burials around the world, except the United States.
Figure 2 - Military graves indicating first and last names.
The page about the burial contains information about its condition (good, bad, excellent), type of burial, number of graves, number of known and unknown buried. Also available on the page is a list of those buried with names and dates of birth and death.
Today, anyone has the opportunity to find information about relatives and loved ones who died or disappeared during the Great Patriotic War. Many websites have been created to study documents containing personal data of military personnel during the war. "RG" presents an overview of the most useful of them. Therefore, do not despair if you were unable to find any data about your relatives in the bank of unpresented awards of the Rossiyskaya Gazeta - the search can be continued on other Internet resources.
Database
www.rkka.ru - a directory of military abbreviations (as well as regulations, manuals, directives, orders and personal documents of wartime).
Libraries
oldgazette.ru - old newspapers (including the war period).
www.rkka.ru - description of military operations of the Second World War, post-war analysis of the events of the Second World War, military memoirs.
Military cards
www.rkka.ru - military topographic maps with the combat situation (by war periods and operations)
Search Engine Sites
www.rf-poisk.ru - official website of the Russian Search Movement
Archives
www.archives.ru - Federal Archive Agency (Rosarkhiv)
www.rusarchives.ru - industry portal "Archives of Russia"
archive.mil.ru - Central archive of the Ministry of Defense.
rgvarchive.ru - Russian State Military Archive (RGVA). The archive stores documents about the military operations of the Red Army units in 1937-1939. near Lake Khasan, on the Khalkhin Gol River, in the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939-1940. Here are also documents of the border and internal troops of the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD-MVD of the USSR since 1918; documents of the Main Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs and institutions of its system (GUPVI Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR) for the period 1939-1960; personal documents of Soviet military leaders; documents of foreign origin (trophy). You can also find on the archive website
The Great Patriotic War brought much destruction to the entire Soviet Union. And the greatest losses were people. Families were destroyed and still want to find their relatives.
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This is why such an opportunity as searching for WWII veterans by last name in Russia (Great Patriotic War) in 2019 works.
What you need to know
In the Russian Federation, there is a problem of finding those citizens who were participants in hostilities. Basically, these are the dead and missing heroes of Russia.
The search may be of interest to those who are looking for information about their own relatives. And perhaps some records in the databases will help find the places of their burial or last place of stay. In addition, the bank of unawarded medals is still full.
In 2019, there are many Internet resources that allow you to search for information depending on the amount of data that a citizen has on hand.
Thanks to these systems for searching and storing information, each person can freely search and find information about their own relatives or help other people find theirs. Because their cases may have been forgotten in the archives for more than 20 years.
Important Concepts
While reviewing this topic, the average user may have difficulty understanding a number of terms. Deciphering them in advance will allow you to more quickly process the necessary information:
| Concept | Its designation |
| Veteran | A title awarded to a person for services to the country and state. This could be service in military units, or hard work in production. |
| WWII | The Great Patriotic War, which began in 1941 and ended in 1945. It was part of the time period of World War II, although it began earlier - in 1939 and ended later, with the surrender of Japan in 1946 |
| Reward | An insignia that is used to express a special degree of gratitude for certain merits |
| Portal | A large website located on the Internet and including a collection of information intended for wide use and open to access from anywhere in the world |
Where to begin
Initially, you should understand that the search will be carried out across several sites and portals. Separate pieces of information have been collected on different resources.
And if you didn’t manage to find a relative the first time, then you can try another site. Mandatory components of the search must include information about the participant in the war.
Various resources allow you to find data of this nature:
- about the dead and missing;
- those who worked in the rear;
- received awards;
- those killed in German concentration camps;
- about decorated living combatants.
You can search for all these indicators. Therefore, you need to decide in which area this operation will be performed. After this, you can proceed to select the required portal to search.
It is better to make a list of several - this will increase the options for matches and information verification. Plus, some sites may have an incomplete database and lack any details.
The legislative framework
The Immortal Regiment in Russia acts as a public patriotic organization. In this regard, their work, and the work of the resources of these institutions, is taken into account from the point of view of Federal Law No. 82-FZ “On Public Associations”.
This legal document allows the creation of international relations between societies - in accordance with Article 46. This makes it possible to exchange information and information on various issues.
Many discrepancies exist within the framework of the activities of such resources with Federal Law No. 152-FZ “On Personal Data”. Article 8 defines the categories of sources of such information that are available to all people. These can be considered reference books and databases. In this case, it will be necessary to obtain consent to publish information.
In most cases, Internet resources post data based on requests from citizens - relatives of the deceased, who want to provide information about their ancestor.
But there are also situations when government documents are declassified. In this case, Federal Law No. 261-FZ “On Amendments to the Federal Law “On Personal Data”” applies. Article 9, paragraph 7, talks about consent in the event of a person's death.
How to find WWII veterans by last name
Searching by last name is one of the most difficult options. The fact is that the more information there is about a citizen, the easier it is to find him. Plus, the surname can be quite common.
And this complicates the search, since the spread will be large. It is worth considering that on different sites the databases consist of different amounts of information about people. Thus, the data ranges from 9 to 13 million people.
In order for the procedure to be successful, it is worth clarifying the following list of data in advance:
- last name, first name and patronymic;
- date of birth - year, month and day;
- place of residence or from which locality he was called up for service, in which unit he served.
This is the minimum set of data that will allow you to find the necessary WWII veteran. Next, you can decide on the search method option. Because there are a lot of them for 2019.
Through the archives of military operations
Archival documentation allows you to find information about those who served in different years, in accordance with the hostilities in which they took part. The history of the veteran can be traced through the records about him.
Such data is mainly stored in Moscow:
These are the main archives, but there are many of them around the country, so you should search according to the citizen’s place of service. This can also be done by contacting the military commissariat that called him up.
Mechanism of action through sites
Thanks to websites, you can get information about a person without leaving home. In this case, you will only need a set of existing information and time. Next, you need to select the portal through which the search is carried out. And after that, information about the person is entered into the search form.
For example, Ivanov, drafted in 1943. The system generates a list, by viewing which you can find your relative. If such an operation does not give the desired result, you should try using another site.
Memorial
OBD Memorial allows you to find information about a citizen using a short list of data:
- year of birth;
- rank.
Using this information, data is obtained about the fate of a person - whether he is in the database of the dead or missing.
Photo: search for WWII veterans by last name on the Memorial website
There is also an advanced search option, which includes entering data about:
- in which documents to search;
- place of conscription, burial;
- date and place of disposal;
- Which hospitals were you in?
It is possible to search for prisoners in the camps:
Photo: search for prisoners in camps on the Memorial website
Winners
This site was created for the 60th anniversary of the Victory and has more than 1.5 million WWII veterans. Information is included about those who were in Russia and about those who are now considered citizens of another country.
The search has a standard form that asks you to write the veteran’s name and select his region of residence:
There is also an interactive map of military operations on this site. With its help you can view the progress of troops. And each stage is accompanied by a detailed commentary.
Photo: interactive map of military operations on the Pobeditel website
Feat of the people
This online resource contains more than 12.5 million records of exploits, and as of 2015, statistics established that more than 500 thousand undelivered awards found their owners using this site.
The portal contains three divisions:
- people and awards;
- documentation;
- geography of military operations.
All known data can be used for searching. There are both standard and advanced searches:
Photo: search for WWII veterans by last name on the Feat of the People website
Initially, you need to go to the organization’s website and click on the people and awards button. Then a standard search will appear, giving you the opportunity to expand it and enter more information about the veteran.
Other options
The My Regiment website involves searching not only military personnel, but also those who lived and worked in the rear. Here you can find information about dead, missing and living people.
Photo: search for WWII veterans by last name on the My Regiment website
At the standard level, you can enter any information about a person, and then conduct an advanced search indicating ranks, place of residence, and so on. Plus, you can tell your story about a WWII veteran from your own family. To do this, register on the site and write a story.
Is it possible to search by awards?
The easiest way to find a veteran is by awards. If there are insignia left or it is known that a rank has been assigned, then such a search will be effective. After all, this will uniqueize the citizen’s request and a more thorough search will be carried out in the database.
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 into 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
