Died in the war 1941 1945. How to find a WWII veteran by name and surname? Review of useful resources on the Internet

Calculations of the number of missing Soviet soldiers during the Great Patriotic War are still ongoing. However, given the lack of information and the contradictory nature of some information, this will not be easy to do.

Difficulties in counting

Almost every Russian family has relatives who disappeared during the Great Patriotic War. It is no longer possible to know the fate of many of them. Thus, the talented military pilot Leonid Khrushchev, the son of the first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee (in 1953-1964) Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, is still considered missing.

In 1966-1968, the calculation of human losses in the Great Patriotic War was carried out by a commission of the General Staff; in 1988-1993, a team of military historians was engaged in collating and verifying the materials of all previous commissions. Despite this, we still do not know exactly how many Soviet soldiers and officers died in this war, especially since there is no accurate data on the number of missing people.

Today, the data on losses that were published in 1993 by a group of researchers led by Grigory Krivosheev, a consultant at the Military Memorial Center of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, are recognized as official. However, Doctor of Historical Sciences Makhmut Gareev does not consider these data final, finding many flaws in the commission’s calculations. In particular, some researchers call the figure for the total losses of the Soviet Union during the war years at 26.6 million incorrect.

Writer Rafael Grugman points out a number of pitfalls that the commission did not pay attention to and which will pose a challenge to any researcher. In particular, the commission did not take into account such a category of persons as policemen and Vlasovites killed by partisans and killed in battles with the Red Army. What types of losses should they be classified as - dead or missing? Or even be included in the enemy’s camp?

Often, in front-line reports, missing persons were combined with prisoners, which today causes considerable confusion when counting them. For example, it is not clear who to include the soldiers who did not return from captivity, because among them were those who died, those who joined the enemy, and those who remained abroad.

Very often, the missing were included in the lists with the total number of losses. Thus, after the Kyiv defensive operation (1941), the missing were classified as killed and captured - a total of more than 616 thousand people.

Today, there are many unmarked graves where Soviet soldiers are buried, and it is completely unclear how many of them are listed as missing. We should not forget about deserters. According to official data alone, about 500 thousand conscripts disappeared without a trace on the way to the military registration and enlistment offices.

Another problem is the almost complete destruction in the 1950s of the registration cards of reserve and rank and file personnel of the Red Army. That is, we do not know the real number of those mobilized during the Great Patriotic War, which makes it difficult to calculate real losses and identify the “missing” category among them.

Such different numbers

The results of a fundamental study by Krivosheev’s group of personnel losses of the USSR Armed Forces in combat for the period from 1918 to 1989 were published in the book “The Classification of Secrecy Has Been Removed. Losses of the Armed Forces in wars, hostilities and military conflicts.”

In particular, it says that during the years of the Great Patriotic War (including during the campaign in the Far East against Japan in 1945), the total irreversible demographic losses (killed, missing, captured and did not return from it, died from wounds, illnesses and as a result of accidents) the Soviet Armed Forces, together with border and internal troops, amounted to 8 million 668 thousand 400 people.

But there are researchers who bring the scale of Soviet losses to completely unimaginable levels. The most impressive figures are given by the writer and historian Boris Sokolov, who estimated the total number of deaths in the ranks of the USSR Armed Forces in 1941-1945 at 26.4 million people, with German losses on the Soviet-German front at 2.6 million (ratio 10:1) . In total, he counted 46 million Soviet citizens who died in the Great Patriotic War.

However, official science calls such calculations absurd, since during all the years of the war, taking into account the pre-war number of military personnel, no more than 34.5 million people were mobilized, of which about 27 million were direct participants in the war. Based on Sokolov’s statistics, the Soviet Union finished off the enemy with only a few hundred thousand military personnel, which does not fit in with the realities of the war.

Those who did not return from the war

Krivosheev’s group conducted a statistical study of a large array of archival documents and other materials containing information about human losses in the army and navy, border and internal troops of the NKVD. Initially, the number of all irretrievable losses of soldiers and officers during the war was determined to be approximately 11.5 million people.

Later, 939.7 thousand military personnel were excluded from this number, recorded at the beginning of the war as missing in action, but re-called into the army in the territory liberated from occupation. The researchers also subtracted from their calculations 1 million 836 thousand former military personnel who returned from captivity after the end of the war.

After lengthy calculations and reconciliations with various sources, in particular, with reports from troops and data from repatriation authorities, the category of irretrievable losses reached the figure of 8 million 668 thousand 400 people. The commission estimated the number of missing and captured people at 3 million 396.4 thousand people.

It is known that in the first months of the war there were significant losses, the nature of which is not documented (information about them was collected subsequently, including from German archives). They amounted to 1 million 162.6 thousand people. Where should I take them? It was decided to address the military personnel who went missing and were captured. In the end there were 4 million 559 thousand people.

Russian publicist and journalist Leonid Radzikhovsky calls this figure overestimated and writes his own - 1 million 783 thousand 300 people. True, he does not include all prisoners in it, but only those who did not return home.

Yours or someone else's?

Many Soviet citizens ended up in the occupied territory of the USSR in the first months of the war. According to German sources, by May 1943, 70 thousand Soviet citizens, mostly prisoners of war, served in the Military Administration police and about 300 thousand in police teams. Only representatives of the Turkic and Caucasian nationalities in the German military formations numbered about 150 thousand people.

After the end of the war, some of the Soviet citizens who sided with the enemy were repatriated and excluded from the category of losses. But some of them went missing, having died or not wanting to return to their homeland. This is where the methodological problem that researchers face arises. If, at the time of being captured, Soviet military personnel were rightfully counted among our losses, then, consequently, after entering service in the German army and police, they can be credited to the enemy’s account? For now this is a debatable issue.

It is even more difficult to classify Soviet prisoners of war who have already been listed as missing, some of whom deliberately went over to the side of the Reich. Among them are about 100 thousand Latvians, 36 thousand Lithuanians and 10 thousand Estonians. Can they be considered irretrievable losses? Clarification of this issue will have a significant impact on the results of the missing persons count.

Return names

In January 2009, in St. Petersburg, at a meeting of the Russian organizing committee “Victory”, data on the number of missing people were announced by the President of the Russian Federation. Those who could not be found either among the killed or among the former prisoners of war turned out to be 2.4 million people. The names of 6 million soldiers out of 9.5 million located in the registered 47 thousand mass graves in our country and abroad also remain unknown.

It is curious that the data on the number of missing Soviet soldiers coincides with the number in the German army. In a German radio telegram emanating from the Wehrmacht casualty department dated May 22, 1945, the figure of 2.4 million people is noted opposite the “missing in action” category.

Many independent researchers believe that the real number of missing Soviet soldiers is significantly higher than the official one. This can be evidenced by an analysis of the Books of Memory, where approximately half of the citizens who were drafted into the Red Army and did not return from the war are marked as missing.

Candidate of Military Sciences Lev Lopukhovsky believes that the official data on the results of the work of Krivosheev’s group are underestimated by 5-6 million people. According to him, the commission did not take into account the huge category of militia soldiers who died, disappeared and were captured, and this is at least 4 million.

Lopukhovsky called for losses in the “missing in action” category to be compared with data from the card files of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense. The number of missing sergeants and soldiers there alone exceeds 7 million people. The names of these servicemen are recorded in the reports of commanders of military units (1,720,951 people) and in the registration data of military registration and enlistment offices (5,435,311 people).

All this suggests that there is no more or less accurate figure reflecting the number of missing Soviet soldiers. Today, missing soldiers and officers, as well as military personnel who were not properly buried, but included in the losses, are the main object of activity for the Russian search movement. It should be noted that to date, Russian search teams have returned the names of approximately 28 thousand soldiers previously considered missing.

“No one is forgotten. Nothing is forgotten." This slogan, dedicated to the feat of Soviet soldiers in the Second World War, is especially relevant today, when more than 75 years have passed since that terrible war. Years passing one after another gradually erase from memory all the horror of the experience. Just as those thanks to whom we exist today as a people, a nation, a state are forgotten. In order to prevent such processes of historical amnesia, the President of Russia decided to create a generalized data bank in which anyone could obtain the necessary information about the dead, dead and missing during the Second World War. This project is called the Memorial ODB, and in this material I will analyze what the Memorial ODB is and how to access its volume data.

Let's figure out why we need Memorial OBD and how to use it

The generalized data bank “Memorial” is a huge electronic database that contains information about the Soviet wars, the dead, the dead, the missing during the Second World War and the post-war period. At the moment, the database contains 20 million personal records about the losses of the Red Army in the Second World War, as well as more than 17 million electronic copies of documents about irretrievable losses.

One of such documents is a certificate of mobilization

The database of dead and missing is not a statistical treasure trove of information; it is constantly updated with new data through digitization (scanning) of data from the State Archive of Russia, the archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the Central Naval Archive and other relevant sources.

The purpose of creating the database is for anyone to obtain information about deceased relatives and friends. Such information is presented in the form of reports of irretrievable losses, specifying the loss of documents, burial passports and other relevant documents.

The organizer and curator of the project is the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, and the technical side of the issue was carried out by the ELAR corporation.

How to use the Memorial OBD

Using the database functionality, you can search for documents where the person you need is mentioned in one way or another. To carry out such a search, you need to go to the Memorial OBD project https://www.obd-memorial.ru/html/index.html. Then enter into the appropriate search fields all the personal data of the person you are looking for (full name, year of birth, title), and then click on “Search”.

If you have only part of the data (for example, only a last name), then the system will show you data about all found persons with that last name. In this case, you will need to consider in detail the data found about each person in order to find the person you need.

For a more detailed search, you should use the special advanced search form https://www.obd-memorial.ru/html/advanced-search.htm. Here you can specify which documents to search in, enter a number of additional search descriptors (country of burial, military rank, camp number, hospital, place of captivity, etc.).

When searching the ODB memorial, remember that documents of those years could have been filled out by people making various spelling and grammatical errors (human factor). Therefore, if you do not find the person you need, try searching for him again, using, for example, similar variations of his full name. For example, instead of Alexandrovich type “Oleksandrovich”, instead of “Kirillovich” type “Kirilovich” and so on. Don't be afraid to experiment and try different forms, maybe one of them will help you find the fighter you are looking for.

Other similar archives

In addition to the Memorial OBD, you can also use other archival projects available on the Internet. This:

Conclusion

OBD "Memorial" is a voluminous database of the dead, dead and missing in the Soviet wars during the Second World War. This source is an invaluable tool that helps to obtain information about those who forged Victory in that great, and at the same time terrible, war. It will help those living today to find relatives and friends, to obtain invaluable information previously hidden behind multiple archival locks.

“Missing in action” - many people received notices with this 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. Firstly, new technological capabilities have emerged to automate the search for required documents. Secondly, search teams carry out useful and necessary work. Thirdly, the archives of the Ministry of Defense have become more accessible. But even today, in the vast majority of cases, ordinary citizens do not know where to look for those missing in action during the Second World War. This article may help someone find out the fate of their loved ones.

Search difficulties

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

Where to look for missing prisoners of war during WWII

The fates of many Soviet prisoners of war after the war developed differently. Some were pardoned by the Stalinist punitive machine, 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 the hostilities. Others were destined for a long journey through places of detention, camps and prisons, where they most often ended up on unsubstantiated charges. A number of soldiers released from captivity ended up in the American, French or British occupation zones. These, as a rule, were handed over by the allies to the Soviet troops, but there were exceptions. For the most part, 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 forest in the Far North or dig canals. In some cases, they find themselves, contact relatives and even assign them foreign inheritances. However, in this case, the search for those missing in action during the Second World War 1941-1945 can be difficult, especially if such a former prisoner changed his last name and does not want to remember his homeland. Well, people are different, as are their destinies, and it’s hard to condemn those who ate bitter bread in a foreign land.

Documentary trail

However, in the vast 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 write reports on irreparable losses. Sometimes there were no bodies left, or it was impossible to identify the remains. It would seem, where to look for those missing in action during the Second World War with such confusion?

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

Central Archive of the Moscow Region

The application procedure itself is simple, and it is also free. The archives of the Ministry of Defense do not require money for the search for those missing in the Second World War of 1941-1945, and bear the costs of sending the answer. In order to make a request, you need to collect as much personal information as possible about who you want to find. The more there is, the easier it will be for Central Asian workers to decide where to look for those missing in action during the Great Patriotic War, in which storage and on which shelf the treasured document may lie.

First of all, you need your last name, first name and patronymic, place and date of birth, information about where you were called from, where you were sent and when. If any documentary evidence, notices or even personal letters have been preserved, then, if possible, they should be included (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 you know in which the missing person served, the unit number and rank, then this should also be reported. In general, everything that is possible, but only reliable. All that remains is to put it all on paper, send it by letter to the Archive’s address and wait for a response. It won't be soon, but it will definitely happen. The people who work in the Central Election Commission of Moscow Region are obligatory and responsible.

Foreign archives

In the Second World War of 1941-1945, if the answer is negative from Podolsk, you should continue abroad. The hard times took Soviet soldiers languishing in captivity wherever they went. Their traces are found in Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Austria, Holland, Norway and, of course, Germany. The Germans kept documentation pedantically; a card was issued for each prisoner, equipped with a photograph and personal data, and if the documents were not damaged during hostilities or bombings, the answer would be found. The information concerns not only prisoners of war, but also those who were involved in forced labor. The search for missing persons in the Second World War sometimes makes it possible to find out about the heroic behavior of a relative in a concentration camp, and if not, then at least clarity will be brought into his fate.

The answer is usually laconic. Archives report on the settlement in the area of ​​which a soldier of the Red or Soviet Army took his last battle. 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 are confirmed. This is due to the fact that searching for missing persons in the Great Patriotic War by last name, and even by first name and patronymic, can lead to ambiguous results. Additional confirmation can be provided by the data of relatives to whom the notification should have been sent. If the burial place is indicated as unknown, then it is usually a mass grave located near the specified settlement. It is important to remember that reports on casualties were often compiled at the battlefields, and they were written in not very legible handwriting. Searching for missing persons in WWII 1941-1945 can be difficult due to the fact that the letter “a” resembles an “o”, or something like that.

Search engines

In recent decades, the search movement has become widespread. Enthusiasts who want to clarify the question of the fate of millions of soldiers who laid down their lives for their Motherland are engaged in a noble cause - they find the remains of fallen soldiers, determine by many signs whether they belong to one unit or another, and do everything to find out their surnames. No one knows better than these people where to look for those missing in action during the Second World War. In the forests near Yelnya, in the swamps of the Leningrad region, near Rzhev, where fierce battles took place, they conduct careful excavations, handing over to their native land its defenders with military honors. Search teams send information to government officials 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 battlefields. And you can do this without leaving your home. On the website of the Ministry of Defense archive you can familiarize yourself with unique documents and verify the veracity of the information provided. These pages emanate living history; 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, we need to start with the lists of the dead. After all, the “funeral” simply could not come, and for many decades the soldier was considered missing.

It should be noted that searching for the burial or military path of one’s grandfather/great-grandfather is a long, sometimes difficult, 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___

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

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 perpetuate 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 inaccessibility of transport and 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 Yandex search 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 search teams in the region.

On the eve of May 9, Memory is remembered especially poignantly. The fallen continue to fight. Successfully. In the information war. They fought off the first lie - they were not forgotten. The cynical, distorted, confused Internet has given up - it is being cleansed by the modern search for soldiers of the Great Patriotic War.

Thanks to grandfather for the Victory - these are not empty words. They are looking for missing grandfathers and great-grandfathers. And they find it. Last battles, burial places. The missing find their destiny. Yes, the living really need this. And there are many of them. They help each other, suggest the search path. They find relatives, fellow villagers, and simply hitherto unknown heroes.

Here is one of the confessions:

“I remember from my distant childhood my grandmother’s stories that her brother Moskal Ignat went to war in 1941 and sank into oblivion... went missing, like thousands of poor soldiers who were ground by the millstones of a terrible war. The family remembered him and reflected on his difficult fate. 70 years have passed... My grandmother passed away...

Her grandchildren became adults and had children of their own... And only quite recently, while scouring Internet search sites, I found him. In the very first days of the war, my grandfather was captured, like tens of thousands of others. Six months later he died in captivity in the Stalag II F (315) camp in Hammerstein... Now I have one more goal. To come to my grandfather’s grave and say thank you to my grandfather for the Victory.”

A neighbor came to see me, found out about the military search, and told me about her grandfather - he died on the Leningrad Front. The officer’s daughter—my friend’s mother—has never seen him and dreams of bowing to his grave all her life. They entered the first and last name into the search - and here it is, the entire short military fate of a twenty-five-year-old lieutenant, commander of a mortar platoon, who died in the winter of the 42nd.

The burial site was also found. Not immediately - after the war, the remains, like other soldiers, were transferred to the fraternal memorial. So the name is carved into the granite. There is somewhere for both daughters and grandchildren to go. There is a more complex search, but it is worth both time and effort.

I don’t believe lies about the war. They entered and came out of it different - romantics and cynics, tough and gentle, matured and remaining children, who fell out of love and found their only love.

Is war dirty? Is our peaceful world cleaner? Some were saving their skins, and some were saving their comrades. Some gave rations to hungry children in Germany, and others took unworthy revenge. Some refused the required armor, others hid from conscription. I know one thing: we are not their judges. They paid for everything with the victory given to us.

You will never be able to reach them, because only war, as the highest test, makes it possible to manifest the very best in a person. They got us out of it. They entrusted the very little thing - to protect the memory from dirty hands and evil tongues. The conclusion is very simple: the small efforts of everyone preserve our common Memory of the holy war.

There is so much to tell, publish documents, post photographs about the Great Patriotic War and its participants - our relatives and friends. After all, this is our pedigree; only we ourselves can write it. In this search you will meet caring and enthusiastic people.

To help, we publish Internet addresses that can help you. Success in this noble cause!

2. A generalized data bank contains information about the defenders of the Fatherland who died and disappeared during the Great Patriotic War and the post-war period - http://obd-memorial.ru/html/index.html

3. How to establish the fate of a serviceman who died or went missing during the Great Patriotic War - http://www.soldat.ru/doc/search/destiny/1_contents.html

4. Search for participants in the Great Patriotic War, burial places, partisan movement, evacuation hospitals, soldier medallions, forums on war topics - http://poisksvoih.ru

5. Confirmation of the participation of a relative in the Second World War from the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation - http://archives.ru/faq/war.shtml

6. Database on prisoners of war - http://www.dokst.ru/node/1118

7. Book of Memory of Soviet Prisoners of War - http://ru.stsg.de/cms/node/916

9. Search for buried and immortalized soldiers on the territory of the Kaliningrad region -