Where my grandfather Nikolai Dmitrievich Shikov fought. Search for WWII participants who died during the fighting. Asylbaev Shagimardan Shayakhmetovich

The cruel Great Patriotic War left its mark on every family. Everyone's grandfathers, grandmothers, great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers fought. Many of them died or went missing. And of those who survived, few have survived to this day. And, as a rule, they do not like to talk about war. The phrase “he (she) did not like to talk about the front” is found in almost half of the memories of children and grandchildren. Therefore, the only way to find out about the fate of relatives is to study documents.

Don't be afraid. It's not difficult at all and you may not even have to go to the archives. All you need is a computer with Internet access. In this article I will tell you about several sites that I personally used to find my great-grandfather. I really hope that they will help you too. First, I will talk about the main search bases, and then about how I managed to find all the information about my missing great-grandfather.

Why Internet?

Using existing databases, you can trace the main events of the military path: the date and place of conscription, wounds, captivity, exploits and awards. If a person does not return from the war, information about the place of his death and burial can be found in the databases.

In 2007, a database was created in which you can find documents from the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense, the Russian State Military Archive, the State Archive and all its branches. The site is updated with new documents from time to time, but most have already been processed.

Award orders can be found here.

This resource allows you to track the movement of the unit in which your relative served on a map. These are just the main databases, but there are others.

What information is required for the search?

It is important to know your first and last name. But it often happens that this information is not enough at all, so you should indicate the date of birth, place of birth and place of recruitment.

How did I find the information?

My great-grandfather was considered missing since 1945. Absolutely nothing was known about him. There were no documents, there was nothing except an old worn photograph that my great-grandmother saved. About 5 years ago, I became very interested in finding out at least something about my relative. I didn’t bother going through the archives and decided to trust Google. Having typed into a search engine: “How to find someone who disappeared during the Second World War?”, the OBD Memorial website appeared in the first list. And it was he who helped me.

Let me remind you that I had absolutely no information except my first and last name. But! Everything worked out! On the site I found documents that contained information about the place of conscription, the date of birth, about the wife (my great-grandmother), and the most important information for me was the date when my great-grandfather went missing (January 1945) and the number of the military unit and field mail (hereinafter referred to as military mail and p/p).

It would seem that this information should be enough, but it was not enough for me. Believing in the power of the almighty Google, I entered the number of the military unit and telephone number, and - a miracle! - I managed to find out that this is number 21 of the Guards Regiment of the 5th Infantry Division. Next, good old Wikipedia came to my aid.

There I learned that the 21st regiment participated in the Koenigsberg operation, during which it crossed several rivers. Since my great-grandfather is considered missing, it would be quite logical to think that he drowned during the crossing. Of course, it was very sad to realize this, but most likely it is so.

Thanks to the site, our family received information about a relative about whom nothing had been known since 1945.

If you have relatives who served (and I'm sure they did), then you can easily find documents, awards, and maybe even photographs. And if you already know everything about a relative who served, then it wouldn’t hurt to look at the documents from 1945. Believe me, it's very interesting!

Don't be lazy and look for information. Knowing about relatives who served is very important. After all, thanks to them, you now live in peace, tranquility and enjoy life.

If you already have all the data and know perfectly well the history of your family who fought, then don’t sit at home with your laptop watching TV series, but be sure to congratulate the veterans on Great Victory Day. We owe them our lives.

Thank you for the peaceful sky above your head.

Today, the development of modern technology has taken a step forward and any information can be found. Every resident of Russia can use the official website to learn about the participants of the Second World War, the period 1941-1945. Therefore, answering the question of how to find WWII participants by last name is not so difficult; this will be described below.

WWII participant, find by last name - official website

Today, special resources have been created, thanks to which you can find missing soldiers and war veterans who are still alive. It's worth noting that these are useful resources that many people use. Today, several sites have been created, but reliable information should be taken from the official one. https://www.obd-memorial.ru. It’s easy to work with; you just need to fill out the fields that are presented on the start page. On them you can get acquainted with extracts and documents that were relevant about seventy years ago.

To find a specific person, you should set up filters. The information that is needed is the full name, if there are other data, then thanks to them you can find the desired person faster. You can indicate years of service, military awards, orders and relatives of the veteran. If you were unable to identify the necessary information, then this is not a reason for frustration. You can try your own after a while. Data on the sites is updated regularly. You can try to find a person using search sites like Yandex.

It is worth noting that the data on the site is filled out by volunteers who conduct excavations at war sites. Everything that they find in the margins relating to the war, the period 1941-1945, is published on this portal. The sites can be replenished by people and social services that work with the elderly. Often war veterans share facts from their lives with their interlocutors. And war is such a period of life that sinks into the soul of an old man for a long time.

Find awards of a WWII participant by last name

Several years ago, a resource appeared on the Internet, thanks to which you can find awards received by participants in the war. This resource stores documents in electronic format that confirm the awards of people who took part in the war. All data is publicly available and anyone can view it. There is information taken from the archives.

The purpose of creating this project is to preserve the memory of each of the heroes of the Victory. There are only facts and no false information. It was recently determined that the resource contains more than twelve million award information. To find out if your relative has been awarded, you need to enter his initials in the Award Search column. If no information is found, you can subscribe to updates that will be sent to you by email.

Find a relative of a WWII participant by last name

To date, no such resource has yet been invented where one could find out about the relatives of war participants. But over time it is planned to create it too. Although on the official website, where you can find participants in the war, information about his relatives may also appear, if it was known earlier. Also on this site you can independently indicate your relationship with a war veteran. Only this needs to be supported by some documents, you need to prove your relationship with the veteran.

But if there is such a need to find relatives of war veterans, then you can contact the military registration and enlistment office and raise the entire archive of documents that should contain the information you are interested in.

How to find WWII participants

The question of how to find a WWII participant by last name is not uncommon today. But the answer to it will be formulated below. Lately, people have been interested in the participants in the war, prompted by the seventieth anniversary of victory, which does not leave a single veteran unattended. There is a good database of WWII participants on the database "Memorial" Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, which is freely available, that is, anyone can use it. You can fill out a questionnaire about a WWII participant if he is your relative, but the knowledge must be reliable.

To find a participant in the Great War, you can contact the military registration and enlistment office that called the person to serve. You will need to write a statement stating that you are a relative and want to find out about the fate of the person or talk about him. After some time, your proposal will be considered and you will be contacted.

If you were unable to search for your relative, you can contact the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense, which is located in the city of Podolsk. You don’t have to go there in person; you can write a letter so that they can tell you about your missing relative. After some time, you should receive an official response, which will indicate either the place of burial or the place of residence of the person.

If a war participant died from combat wounds or died in captivity, then in order to find out as many facts about him as possible, you need to write a letter to the FSB, who can search the archives for information about the person.

How to find war participants using a television program?

Many people are looking for people who went missing on the battlefields to find out whether they are alive or not. And there are a lot of ways to do this. You can use specially created search sites, broadcasts, some associations and groups on social networks, archives and other places. Every year there are fewer and fewer unmarked graves or veterans who were unable to find their relatives. Therefore, the state is doing everything so that the participants of the Second World War find their relatives, and the whole country is proud of them.

Programs that search for missing people have recently gained wide popularity, especially those about program "Wait for me" where War Veterans are often found. After all, many veterans watch this program in the hope of finding their relatives and colleagues. This television project searches for missing people not only in Russia, but also in other countries, which increases the chances of finding the missing person. You can write a letter to the studio if you cannot come in person. You must include a description of the person and a photograph, if available, with your description.

In this article, we looked at how to find WWII participants by last name, what methods and sites there are for this. But in reality this will not be so easy. You may have to use several methods at once to find out about your missing relative.

At the moment, the official service for searching for awards of a veteran of the Great Patriotic War is located at the link.

Additional resources for finding veterans are described In this article.

Video about search methods

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.

1. 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.
2. 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:

1. 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.
2. 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 be required to pay for your request.
3. 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 last 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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

Many people whose relatives took part in the Great Patriotic War still do not know about the fate of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers. To perpetuate the memory of all participants in the war and provide information about the place of their burial to relatives and friends, the Memorial website was launched in 2007.

This site was developed under the guidance of the Ministry of Defense. Over the 10 years of the existence of the Memorial archive, there are about 17 million digital copies of documents about irretrievable losses, as well as about 20 million personal records about the losses of the Red Army in the Great Patriotic War. The primary burial places of more than 5 million soldiers and officers have been made public.

If you need to find your relatives, then use the website www.obd-memorial.ru, which contains an archive of participants in the Great Patriotic War (WWII). Using the archive of the Ministry of Defense, you can search by the last name of WWII participants.

By going to the Memorial website, you can begin searching for a participant in the Great Patriotic War. To do this, on the main page of the site, use the “Set Fates” tab. To start a search by last name, you need to indicate the following information in the empty fields: last name, first name, patronymic, year of birth, rank. If you cannot fill in one of the fields, then you can leave the field blank.

Set destinies After filling out the fields and conducting a search, the computer will give you search results.

If nothing was found according to your request, then you can use the advanced search. During an advanced search, it is possible to set the following search parameters: full name, surname in Latin, date of birth, place of birth, date and place of enlistment, last place of service, military rank, camp number, date of departure, country of burial, region of burial, place of burial, place of departure, hospital from where he was reburied, place of capture, date of death. It is also possible to specify the lists in which to search first.

Advanced Search

If you still haven’t been able to find anyone, don’t despair. The archive of the Ministry of Defense of participants in the Great Patriotic War is updated annually with new records. Therefore, it is possible that in a year or two you will be able to establish the fate of your relative who was a participant in the Great Patriotic War.

Archive of WWII participants

We all know from childhood how destructive and bitter the Great Patriotic War was for the entire Soviet people. The war, which claimed the lives of more than 26 million of our compatriots, still echoes the tragedy in many families, because not only those who lost their fathers and mothers are still alive, but even those who met the enemy with weapons in their hands.

The number of missing people alone after the war was estimated at almost 5 million people. To date, despite all efforts, it has been possible to clarify the fate of only 1 million people, of whom 500 thousand died under unclear circumstances, and the other 500 thousand remained abroad. The fate of more than 3 million people remains unclear.

Today, not only the surviving veterans are elderly, but also their children. In this regard, the main share of those who are now searching for the missing or simply want to learn about the military path of their relatives are the grandchildren of war participants.

How can I find out where my grandfather fought by his last name?

Recently, many resources have appeared on the Internet to help with searching for information about veterans, their combat journey or burial places; all this was achieved thanks to the digitization of a huge amount of paper archival data.

You can start from the website obd-memorial.ru is an electronic database of the central archive of the Ministry of Defense (TsAMO), contains a large number of records about the dead soldiers of the Red Army in the Second World War. On it you can find where your grandfather fought by last name, first name, patronymic and year of birth.

If the search does not produce results, you should definitely try changing some letters, especially if the surname is difficult to pronounce or enter one consonant when it is correct to write double ones, for example, replacing “Filippovich” with “Filippovich”. Often the data was filled in with errors and was difficult to read; you need to take this into account and try to enter data into the search engine with appropriate amendments.

On the site moypolk.ru contains information not only about the dead, but also about the missing and survivors of the war; the database is still being replenished with the help of participants in the “Immortal Regiment” action. On it you can also find out where your grandfather fought in the Second World War and about his future fate by last name, first name and patronymic.

If your grandfather went missing, then he could well be among the prisoners of war, since more than 4.5 million people were captured by the Germans during the entire war. Information about those killed in German concentration camps is available on the website dokst.ru

During the search, you may more than once encounter full namesakes, so it is very important to collect as much information as possible in the family about where you were born, where you were drafted, whether there are front-line photographs (by insignia you can establish rank and approximate time, by uniform - branch of the military).

It is worth noting that the names of many settlements have changed since then. In order to find out exactly what those areas were called during the war, you need to use historical reference books.

You definitely need to look for letters from the front; the envelopes were marked with the number of the field postal station, by which you can determine the number of the military unit. Information on postal numbers of those years and their correspondence can be obtained in directories on the website soldat.ru/spravka/ . On the site's forum you can also take advantage of the advice of experienced search engines on how to find out where your grandfather fought.