Benjamin Kandaurov disappeared in the wwii. How to find a WWII veteran by name and surname? Survey of useful resources on the net. Central archive of the Ministry of Defense

“Missing in action” - many people received notifications with such a phrase during the war years. There were millions of them, and the fate of these defenders of the Motherland remained unknown for a long time. In most cases, it remains unknown today, but there is still some progress in clarifying the circumstances of the disappearance of the soldiers. Several circumstances contribute to this. First, there are new technological opportunities for automating the search for the required documents. Secondly, search teams carry out useful and necessary work. Third, the archives of the Ministry of Defense have become more accessible. But ordinary citizens today, in the overwhelming majority of cases, do not know where to look for the missing in the Second World War. This article may help someone find out the fate of loved ones.

Search difficulties

In addition to factors contributing to success, there are those that make it difficult to find the missing in the Second World War. Too much time has passed, and there is less and less material evidence of events. There are no more people capable of confirming this or that fact. In addition, the disappearance was viewed during and after the war as a suspicious fact. It was believed that a soldier or officer could be captured, which in those years was considered almost a betrayal. A soldier of the Red Army could go over to the side of the enemy, and this happened, unfortunately, quite often. For the most part, the fate of the traitors is known. Collaborators who were caught and identified were tried and either executed or received long sentences. Others have taken refuge in distant lands. Those of them who have survived to this day usually do not want to be found.

Where to look for prisoners of war missing in WWII

The fate of many Soviet prisoners of war after the war developed in different ways. The Stalinist punitive machine had mercy on some, and they returned home safely, although for the rest of their lives they did not feel like full-fledged veterans and they themselves felt some guilt before the "normal" participants in hostilities. Others were prepared for a long journey to places of detention, camps and prisons, where they most often ended up on unsubstantiated charges. A number of the liberated soldiers ended up in the American, French or British zones of occupation. These, as a rule, were given by the allies to the Soviet troops, but there were exceptions. Most of our soldiers wanted to go home to their families, but rare realists understood what awaited them and asked for asylum. Not all of them were traitors - many simply did not want to cut down the forest in the Far North or dig canals. In some cases, they find themselves, contact their relatives and even write off foreign inheritance to them. However, in this case, the search for those missing in WWII 1941-1945 can be difficult, especially if such a former prisoner changed his last name and does not want to remember his homeland himself. Well, people are different, as are their fates, and it is hard to condemn those who ate bitter bread in a foreign land.

Documentary footprint

However, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the situation was much simpler and more tragic. In the initial period of the war, soldiers simply died in unknown cauldrons, sometimes together with their commanders, and there was no one to draw up reports on irrecoverable losses. Sometimes there were no bodies left, or it was impossible to identify the remains. It would seem, where to look for the missing in the Second World War with such a mess?

But there is always one thread, pulling on which, you can somehow unravel the history of the person of interest. The fact is that any person, especially a military man, leaves behind a "paper" trail. His whole life is accompanied by a documentary turnover: clothing and food certificates are issued for a soldier or officer, he is included in the event of an injury in a hospital, a medical card is issued to a soldier. Here is the answer to the question of where to look for the missing. The Second World War ended long ago, and the documents are kept. Where? In the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense, in Podolsk.

Central archive of the Ministry of Defense

The application procedure itself is simple, and besides, it is free. For the search for the missing in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, the Ministry of Defense archive does not require money, and the costs of sending the answer are covered. In order to compose a request, you need to collect as much personal information as possible about who is to be found. The more there is, the easier it will be for Central Asian workers to decide where to look for those missing in the Great Patriotic War, in which storehouse and on which shelf the cherished document may be.

First of all, you need a surname, name and patronymic, place and date of birth, information about where he was called from, where he was sent and when. If any documentary evidence, notices or even personal letters have been preserved, then, if possible, they should be attached (copies). Information about government awards, incentives, injuries and any other information related to service in the Armed Forces of the USSR will also not be superfluous. If it is known in which the missing person served, the military unit number and rank, then this should also be reported. In general, everything that is possible, however, only reliable. It remains to put all this on paper, send it by letter to the address of the Archive and wait for a response. He will not be soon, but certainly. People who work in the Central Asia Ministry of Defense are obligatory and responsible.

Foreign archives

In the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, with a negative answer from Podolsk, it should be continued abroad. Wherever the roads did not take the hard times of Soviet soldiers languishing in captivity. Traces of them are found in Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Austria, Holland, Norway and, of course, in Germany. The Germans kept the documentation meticulously, a card with a photograph and personal data was put up for each prisoner, and if the documents were not damaged during the hostilities or bombings, there will be an answer. The information concerns not only prisoners of war, but also those who were involved in forced labor. The search for the missing in the Second World War sometimes allows you to learn about the heroic behavior of a relative in a concentration camp, and if not, then at least his fate will be clarified.

The answer is usually concise. The archives report on the settlement in the region of which a soldier of the Red or Soviet Army took his last battle. Confirmed information about the place of pre-war residence, the date from which the soldier was removed from all types of allowance, and the place of his burial. This is due to the fact that the search for missing persons in the Great Patriotic War by surname, and even by name and patronymic, can lead to ambiguous results. Additional confirmation can be the data of the relatives to whom the notification should have been sent. If the place of burial is indicated as unknown, then usually it is a mass grave located near the indicated settlement. It is important to remember that casualty reports were often drawn up on the battlefield, and they were written in not very legible handwriting. Searching for the missing in WWII 1941-1945 can be difficult due to the fact that the letter "a" resembles "o", or something like that.

Search engines

In recent decades, the search movement has become widespread. Enthusiasts wishing to clarify the fate of the millions of soldiers who laid down their heads for the Motherland are engaged in a noble cause - they find the remains of fallen soldiers, determine their belonging to one or another part by many criteria, and do everything to find out their names. No one knows better than these people where to look for the missing in the Second World War. In the forests near Yelnya, in the swamps of the Leningrad region, near Rzhev, where fierce battles were going on, they conduct careful excavations, handing over their defenders to their native land with military honors. The search groups send the information to the authorities and the military, who update their databases.

Electronic means

Today everyone who wants to find out the fate of their glorious ancestors has the opportunity to look into the commander's reports from the battlefield. And you can do this without leaving your home. On the website of the Ministry of Defense you can get acquainted with the unique documents and make sure that the information provided is correct. Living history emanates from these pages, they seem to create a bridge between eras. Searching for missing persons in the Great Patriotic War by last name is not difficult, the interface is convenient and accessible to everyone, including the elderly. In any case, you need to start with the lists of the victims. After all, the "funeral" could simply not reach, and for many decades the soldier was considered missing.

We have kept the memory of the Great War of the 20th century and its heroes for over 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 employees of the military archives, volunteers who devote their free time to searching for soldiers' graves. How to do this, how to find a WWII participant by last name, data on 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 for and want to find.

Losses in the Great Patriotic War

It is not known exactly how many people left us during this great human tragedy. After all, the counting did not start right away, only in 1980, with the arrival of glasnost in the USSR, historians and politicians, archivists were able to start official work. Until that time, there were scattered data that were profitable at that time.

• After celebrating the Victory Day in 1945, JV Stalin announced that we had buried 7 million Soviet citizens. He spoke, in his opinion, about everyone, both those who lay down during the battle, and those who were taken prisoner by the German invaders. But he missed a lot, did not say about the rear staff, who stood from morning till night at the bench, falling dead from exhaustion. I forgot about the condemned saboteurs, traitors to the motherland, ordinary inhabitants and blockades of Leningrad who died in small villages; missing. Unfortunately, they can be enumerated for a long time.
• Later L.I. Brezhnev provided other information, he reported 20 million dead.

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

• The combat losses received directly at the front during the battles are about 8 860 400 people.
• Non-combat losses (from diseases, wounds, accidents) - 6,885,100 people.

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

These are diseases, hunger in the post-war years and death from it. This is rebuilding the country anew, 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 a 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 preserve information for others, to avoid such a repetition. How to find a WWII participant by last name, where can I find possible data on grandfathers and great-grandfathers, fathers - participants in battles, knowing their last name? There are now electronic repositories specially for this, to which everyone has access.

1. obd-memorial.ru - it 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 which, we would not have heard the important word "Victory". Thanks to this site, many have already been able to find or help find the lost.

The job of these resources is not only to find great people, but also to collect information about them. If you have any, please inform the administrators of these sites. Thus, 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 - the main, central, most ambitious project - https://archive.mil.ru/. The documents preserved there are mostly single and remained intact due to the fact that they were taken to the Orenburg region.

Over the years, the staff of the Central Asia has created an excellent reference apparatus showing the content of archival accumulations and funds. Now its goal is to provide people with access to possible documents by means of electronic computers. Thus, a website has been launched where you can try to find a soldier 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 card files for this person.
• You can set the filter on the right by selecting only the sources you want. But it's better to choose everything.
• On this site, it is possible to look at the combat operations on the map, and the path of the unit in which the hero served.

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

If you did not find the right person there, do not despair, there are other sources, maybe they are not so large-scale, but their information content does not diminish from this. Who knows in which folder the information you need could have been hidden.

WWII participants: search by last name, archive and awards

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

1. dokst.ru. As we said, those who were in captivity also became victims of this terrible war. Their fate can be displayed on foreign sites like this one. Here, the database contains everything about Russian prisoners of war and burials of Soviet citizens. You only need to know the last name, you can see the lists of captured people. The Scientific Research Center for Documentation is located in Dresden, it was he who organized this site to help people from all over the world. You can not only search the site, but send a request through it.
2. Rosarkhiv archives.ru is an agency that is an executive authority that keeps records of all government documents. You can apply here with a request either via the Internet or by phone. A sample of an electronic appeal is available on the website in the section "requests", left column on the page. Some services are provided here for a fee, a list of them can be found in the section "archive activities". With this in mind, be sure to ask if you will need to pay for your request.
3. rgavmf.ru - a reference book of the navy about the fate and great deeds of our sailors. In the section "orders and applications" there is an e-mail 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 dedicated to this www.podvignaroda.ru has been organized. Here is published information about 6 million cases of awarding, as well as 500,000 medals and orders not awarded, which did not reach the recipient. Knowing the name of your hero, you can find a lot about his fate. The laid out scanned documents of orders and award sheets, data from the registration cards, will complement the knowledge you have.

Who else can I contact for information about awards?

• On the website of the Central Asia Ministry of Defense, in the section "Awards are looking for their heroes", a list of the awarded fighters who did not receive them is published. Additional surnames can be found by phone.
• rkka.ru/ihandbook.htm - encyclopedia of the red army. It contains some lists of the assignment of higher officer ranks and special ranks. The information may not be as extensive, but the existing sources should not be neglected.
• https://www.warheroes.ru/ is a project created to popularize the exploits of the defenders of the Fatherland.

A lot of useful information, which sometimes is not available anywhere, can be found on the forums of the above sites. Here, people share precious 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, they can also be found only on the forums. Do not bypass 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, they can be any: name, name of awards and date of receipt, line from the document, description of the event. This combination of words will be calculated by search engines, but not just on sites, but in old newspapers. Based on the results, you will see everything that you could find. Suddenly it is here that you are lucky, you will find at least a thread.
2. It so happens that we search among the dead, but we 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. People who are looking here send letters, where they ask for help to find their fellow soldiers, casual oncoming war. The possibilities of the project allow you to select a person by name and region, even if he lives abroad. Seeing him in these lists or similar, you need to contact the administration and discuss this issue. The kind, attentive staff will definitely help and do everything they can. The project does not interact with government organizations and cannot provide personal information: phone number, address. But it is quite possible to publish your search request. More than 1000 people have been able to find each other in this way.
3. 1941-1945.at Veterans do not abandon their own. Here on the forum you can chat, 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 deceased heroes. Who else will tell us the truth about those events, about what we have experienced and suffered. About how we met the victory - the very first, dearest, saddest and happiest at the same time.

Additional sources

Regional archives were created throughout the country. Not so large, holding on, often on the shoulders of ordinary people, they have kept 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.

You tell me, “Why seek?

Long gone are those who are killed here,

Gone are those that could have been waiting for them,

And they are all forgotten long ago ... "

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 have photographs. But when you see the name of a loved one in the report of the Memorial base, for example, for some reason you can imagine the train under fire, the trenches more clearly ... And it seems that if you learn at least something else, your soldier will not be so lonely in his unknown grave ... And you hope that the warriors who have not returned will not be left without prayers.

About where and how to look for information about the burial place of a soldier of the Great Patriotic War, "Foma" told Dmitry Alexandrovich 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".

Step 1: where to start

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

For this:

At this stage of the search, to begin with, a surname, name, patronymic, year of birth, preferably a title, is enough. If he is Ivan Ivanov, then, of course, it will be more difficult. It is necessary to show persistence to make sure that this is the person who is needed, details will be needed - the name of the wife, mother, the name of the village, the city from which he was called, the 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 really stupid spelling mistakes in the database. My great-grandfather's name was Andrei Kirillovich. I wrote "Kirillovich" as a normal person with two years, and then I thought that not everyone knows how Kirillovich is spelled ...

Kirillovich dialed with one "l" and immediately found the burial place. Also Filippovich - maybe Felipovich, and with one "p", and so on. And in both the surname and the first name, it is also better to try to change the letters in case they were written by an illiterate person or the original document is poorly readable. Such moments must be taken into account.

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

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

But you can continue your search on your own. In this case, it is necessary to collect as much information as possible in order to start 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 post office (PPS) on the envelope stamp. It can be used to establish the number of the division, regiment, etc.

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

Database "Feat of the people"

TsAMO project.

This is a database that contains information about soldiers awarded with medals. The database is not yet complete, not all documents have been scanned yet.

There are several hospital databases on this resource. Dial the hospital number, press Enter and see which division he served.

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

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

If you register on it, you can get advice from completely unfamiliar historians, specialists, everyone who is fond of searching, and employees of military registration and enlistment offices.

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

Then create a topic (it is better to name it briefly, for example, "No. __ -th rifle division. Looking for a relative"). After that, your request can be read by everyone who will visit this site. Do not doubt! There will be enough such unfamiliar and caring people. Everyone will help you with the information they have. Some will answer, advise, advise, others - recommend sites, scan the documents you need, excerpts from books, etc.

Other Resources

There are many more resources that publish interviews of veterans, biographies. But it should be borne in mind that these sources, as a rule, are of no historical value either for the researcher or for those who want to use this material in the search.

To organize in archivesthe search for those killed and missing in WWII 1941-1945 for relatives by last name is necessary

1) Collect as much information as possible about the wanted front-line soldier (surname, time / place of birth; region of conscription; place (s) of military service; type of service; number (s) of unit (s); any official and unofficial notifications about the hit captured; field mail numbers from sent letters, etc.)

2) Apply with all this data to the Internet sites:

a) thematic resource of the Ministry of Defense called "United Data Bank" Memorial "*. Address: www.obd-memorial.ru.

b) electronic bank "The feat of the people in the Great Patriotic War 1941-45."

Includes numbers and texts of awards orders. Address: http://podvignaroda.mil.ru/?#tab=navHome.

c) "Memory of the people"

This resource contains information about the locations of military units at all stages of the Second World War. Address: https://pamyat-naroda.ru/.

d) "Immortal Regiment"

The websites of the public initiative moypolk.ru and polkrf.ru allow you to search for front-line soldiers using their own database, publications in the media, order numbers, archival documents, stories of WWII participants, etc.

3) Send requests to search for the missing person in the Second World War to unofficial archives and databases collected by public figures (you can find the names of those using Yandex and any other search engine).

4) Apply to specialized archives (the capital's State Military Archives and / or similar archives of the former Soviet republics; archives of law enforcement agencies, etc.). When visiting a selected archive in person, you may need a statement indicating your personal data, the purpose of collecting information and an approximate list of requested documents.

5) Send a request to search for the dead and missing in WWII 1941-1945 to the archives of Germany and the countries on the territory of which hostilities were fought. The main building of the Federal Archives of Germany is based in Koblez, and the largest branches are in Freiburg, Berlin and other cities.

6) Contact the local archives of German cities and states (Dresden Documentation Center under the organization "Saxon Memorials", etc.)

7) If there is information about the approximate place of death of the wanted relative, contact the local military-patriotic detachments, the list of which is available on the Sporf.ru resource (subsection "Region. Representatives").

Algorithm for finding a missing relative

The more data is known about the front-line soldier, the easier it is. Ideally, in addition to the name of the person sought, it is desirable to have information about his place of birth, date and place of conscription, military unit number, etc. As a result of the analysis of documents provided by online resources, it is possible to trace the life path of the ancestor. For example, information from award documents will allow you to find out about the exploits committed by a relative, the address of the family's residence during the Second World War, etc.

"Missing"

In no case should such a wording in the search results be the basis for stopping the search. According to the documents about the places of service, one can "calculate" the hero's brother-soldiers and from them learn the details of the fatal battle. There are cases when fighters who have lost their memory "surfaced" under different names. The main thing is not to stop searching, using any, even the most insignificant, "clues".

It will not be superfluous to establish contacts with representatives of the search teams (personal belongings and remains found by them often allow shedding light on events of interest).

It is important to remember that fighters who were captured were recorded as missing. To search in this direction, it is advisable to contact the domestic Ministry of Defense and the German Documentation Center located in Dresden, where data on the citizens of the Soviet Union captured by the Nazis are collected.

How to act in case of failure

Seek advice from like-minded people and people who have been searching for a long time. From them you can find out the addresses of thematic forums and social networks (some sites are entirely devoted to discussing the front-line life of specific units and formations). The forum of the site "All-Russian Genealogical Tree" contains links to a great variety of links and archives, request forms to various departments, search recommendations, etc.

OBD "Memorial"

* Generalized computer data bank "Memorial" - an information archive created by presidential order No. pr-698 of 23.04.2003 with information about the defenders of the Motherland who died and went missing during the Second World War (1941-1945) and the post-war period.

The mission of the WBS "Memorial" project is to provide citizens with the opportunity to establish the destinies and places of burial / captivity / disappearance of their relatives.

The formation and filling of the site www.obd-memorial.ru is carried out by the specialists of the ELAR corporation.

Data on the soldiers of the Red Army and partisan detachments were collected by employees of the Logistics Service for

• - departmental archives (Navy, Air Force, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Internal Affairs, KGB / FSB);
• - branches of the Russian State Military Archives;
• - branches of the State Archives of the Russian Federation;
• - profile departments of the Ministry of Defense;
• - open sources (newspaper publications; postal data; reports of irretrievable losses; documentation of medical battalions and hospitals; trophy cards of prisoners of war; passports of burials, etc.).

The result of this interaction was the creation of a global (and regularly updated) information and reference system with more than 13.4 million digitized pages of archival documents and 42 thousand passports of burials. OBD "Memorial" - the largest electronic archive the missing soldiers of the second world war in the world.

On Obd-memorial.ru millions of scanned copies of documentary primary sources with information about personalities are available for study. Portal visitors can search for the necessary information about the front-line soldiers online. Access to the portal is open 24 hours a day.

The search for the missing participants in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 can be made on the websites (the addresses are listed above), which have solid databases with the names of the fallen soldiers found by the search squads. To submit a request, you will need to enter the full name and, if possible, additional information about the wanted person (his age, rank, military awards, etc.). The bases on these portals are constantly updated, so a negative result of the first attempt may turn into a positive one after a while.

An alternative to these sites can be an appeal to regional military-patriotic clubs, the coordinates of which can be found on the Web. The search engines will add a photo of the missing relative with the personal data of the deceased to the common database, after which the same enthusiasts across the country will join the search for the fighter.

And, finally, you can write (call) the program "Wait for me", the organizers of which are looking for missing soldiers all over the planet. To get into the project database, you will need to fill out a questionnaire on the Poisk.vid.ru portal. The more information about a missing relative is known, the higher the likelihood of establishing information about him. Search activities begin immediately after the submission of the questionnaire. According to statistics, employees of "Wait for me" weekly look for information about several dozen people, about a third of whom are ordinary soldiers, officers and partisans who have not returned from the war.

Attention! Due to the large number of incoming requests, the processing of new requests has been temporarily suspended. You can search independently in the databases "Memorial" (obd-memorial.ru), "Heroic deeds of the people" (podvignaroda.ru) and "Memory of the people" (pamyat-naroda.ru) - the search for them is absolutely free.