Interesting

How to find out where my grandfather fought in WWII, what awards did he have?

Good day everyone!

Not so long ago I tried to help one friend find relatives who fought in the Second World War (1941-1945). Oddly enough, we quickly managed to find his grandfather, the number of his unit where he fought, also looked at several of his awards. The acquaintance was pleased and proud of his grandfather, but I was thinking ...

I think that almost every family has relatives who participated in the Great Patriotic War, and many would like to know more about them (which is why I decided to sketch this article). Moreover, many old people do not like to talk about the front, and it is not uncommon in a family that they do not even know all the awards of their grandfather!

By the way, many people mistakenly believe (and I, until recently) that in order to find at least something, you need to know a lot of information about a person, know how to access the archives (and where to go), have a lot of free time, etc. ... But in fact, now, to try to start a search, it is enough to know the name and surname.

And so, below I will consider several interesting sites in more detail ...

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Where to find archived data

# 1: The feat of the people

Website: //podvignaroda.ru/?#tab=navHome

Very, very interesting site created by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. It is a large database in which all available documents from the military archives are entered: where and who fought, what awards he received, what feats, etc. Absolutely everything is entered, regardless of the rank and scale of the feat. I can add that the site database has no analogues in terms of its size.

To start the search - open the page people and awards (link to it in the top menu of the site). Next, enter the name and surname of your grandfather in the search box (arrow-2 in the screenshot below), and click the "Search" button.

Search for grandfather by first name, last name and patronymic (all coincidences with someone are random)

Then you will be presented with a list of found people: note that there can be a lot of them if your relative has a common first and last name. Opposite each person will be displayed his year of birth, rank, order, medal (if any).

It is recommended to take turns opening and looking at information about each person similar to your relative (for example, you can know at least approximately the year of birth of your grandfather, where he comes from, where he lived).

List of people found

In the card itself, a lot of information is displayed per person: rank, place of call, place of service, date of the feat (if any), archival documents about the award, registration card, photo of a leaflet with a description of the feat, medal and order (example below).

Information about the person

In general, quite informative and complete. I recommend starting your search for a person from this site. If you are lucky, and you will find data about him here, then you will get pretty decent information to continue your search (you will know the year of birth, part of where he served, where he was called from, etc. details that many do not already know about).

By the way, despite the fact that all the basic information has already been posted on the site, from time to time it is updated with new archived data. Therefore, if you did not find anything, try to log in after a while and search again, also use the sites that I will give below.

# 2: OBD Memorial

Website: //obd-memorial.ru/

The full name of the site is the Generalized Data Bank.

The main purpose of this site is to enable citizens to find and learn about the fate of their relatives, find out the place of their burial, where they served, and other information.

The Military Memorial Center of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation carried out a unique work, as a result of which you can use the reference system of global importance!

The data used to fill the database of this site are taken from official archival documents located in the Central Archive of the RF Ministry of Defense, the Central Naval Archive of the RF Ministry of Defense, the Russian State Military Archive, the State Archive of the RF, etc.

During the work, more than 16.8 million documents were scanned and posted on the network, over 45 thousand passports of military graves.

How to search for a person in the OBD

Yes, in general, it is standard. On the main page of the site, enter in the search fields all the information that you know. It would be very nice to enter at least first name, last name, and patronymic. Then click the search button (example below).

In the data found, you will see the person's date and place of birth, by which you can navigate and start looking through the required profiles.

In the questionnaire, you can find out the following information: full name, date and place of birth, date and place of conscription, military rank, reason for retirement, date of retirement, name of the source of information, fund number, source of information. And also look at the scanned sheet itself with archived data.

No. 3: Memory of the people

Website: //pamyat-naroda.ru

Another huge database site created by the Department of Defense. The main goal of the project is to enable all users to get information about the participants in the Great Patriotic War through new web tools and the development of generalized data banks "Memorial" and "The feat of the people in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945."

To start searching for a person, just enter his full name (if any, then another year of birth). Then click the "Find" button.

Next, you will be shown all found people with similar initials. Having opened the card for a person, you will find out: the date of his birth, place of conscription, military units, awards, dates of exploits, numbers of funds - sources of information, archive, you will be able to see scans for which awards were given.

In addition, on this site you can see what the path that your grandfather took and fought on was. (example on the map below: the beginning of the path near Novosibirsk, then Tyumen, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny, etc.).

Note: the map is large enough, and the screenshot below shows a small piece of it.

Where grandfather was and fought - the path on the map!

# 4: Immortal Regiment

Website: //www.moypolk.ru

This is the official website of the Immortal Regiment movement. Those who live in Russia probably know and have heard about him. In general, I mentioned this site for the simple reason that you can try to perform a search on it (for this, just type in the required full name into the search term of the site).

Search in the base of the movement (from the site "Immortal regiment")

By the way, I also want to note that the site has already collected about half a million profiles and they are constantly being added. In addition, you can tell your story about your grandfather (everything you know) and his profile will be entered into the site's database (what if someone adds your information ?!).

Tell your story

Screenshot from the site "Immortal Regiment"

From the soldier's questionnaire, you can find out quite detailed information about him: name, rank, region, locality, history, etc. An example of a card is shown in the screenshot below.

How the soldier's profile will look like (screen from the site "Immortal regiment")

In general, I definitely recommend the site for acquaintance (especially if you could not find anything on the previous 3 resources).

PS

If you are looking for the burial place of your relatives who participated in the Second World War, I recommend that you familiarize yourself with this article: //www.pomnivoinu.ru/home/reports/1760/.

In it, you will learn how to correctly create a request to the archive, how to issue it, where to send it specifically. In general, very useful information.

Well, that's all for me, I hope helped, if not find, then at least gave useful "food" to start the search ...

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Good luck! 👋

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