From: <janmallen@att.net>
To: IAJGS Leadership Forum <leadership@iajgs.org>
Cc:
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Date: Sat, 16 May 2020 23:35:41 -0700
Subject: [IAJGS Leadership] (Russia, Belarus) New World War ll Databases Free and in Russian
Vera Miller of Find Lost Russian & Ukrainian Family has informed us about three new online databases honoring the 75th anniversary of World War ll. As all are free and in Russian you may need to use Google translate or Steve Morse’s website for transliterating English to Russian in one step: https://stevemorse.org/russian/eng2rus.html
The databases are:
soldier photos of men and women who served in the Soviet Army
St. Petersburg Archives has a database of over 67,000 civilian recipients of “Fort Defense of Leningrad” medals. The database is searchable by last name, year of birth or place of employment. There are downloadable scans of award documents for each recipient.
"It (the medal) was awarded to active participants in the heroic defense of the city on the Neva - all those who, despite hunger and cold, shelling and bombing, stood by the machine, extinguished incendiary bombs, nursed the wounded, dug trenches, supported the urban economy, taught and cared for children, holding thereby personal victory in the battle for Leningrad," says the website.
The Soviet government gave the award to 1.47 million recipients (according to Wikipedia) so the database is a work in progress.
Another database is Explosion of Partisan based on documents from the Central Headquarters of the Partisan Movement at the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command. http://rgaspi.info/k-75-letiyu-pobedy/nagrady-partizan/
Information on more than 8,500 people awarded for their involvement in the war's partisan movement are detailed in the database, which also is a work on progress.
This database can be easily searched by surname. Information provided on award recipients can include full name, birth year, place for call of service, place of residence, partisan group name, award presented, presenter of award and file location of record.
Requests to obtain scans of records can be sent to rgaspi@inbox.ru It is highly recommended to write in Russian.
So far, most WWII databases from Russia have focused on soldiers of the Soviet Army.
The other database comes from the Republic of Belarus- A BOOK OF MEMORY (https://www.mil.by/base/index.php)
an effort by the Office to Perpetuate the Memory of Defenders of the Fatherland and Victims of Wars of the Armed Forces of Belarus.
The database provides information on people who died in Belarus during WWII and those who came from Belarus and died elsewhere during WWII. Users can find the following information in the database: full name, year of birth, place of birth, place of call of duty, place of service, position, date of death, cause of death, burial number and place of burial.
Those seeking information on their relatives or ancestors from Belarus will need to look page by page or know their full name- first, patronymic (name derived from father's first name such as Ivanovich) and surname.
Some people on this database can be found on MEMORY OF THE PEOPLE (https://pamyat-naroda.ru/heroes/?adv_search=y)
but others are only found on A Book of Memory. (See above)
There are ~2 million photos posted to Dear Memory (https://foto.pamyat-naroda.ru/) of men and women who served in the Soviet Army during World War ll. The photos on Dear Memory can also be found on Memory of the People (see above). To read how to search Dear Memory see: https://lostrussianfamily.wordpress.com/2018/06/03/millions-of-records-added-to-wwii-database/
To read more see:
Jan Meisels Allen
Chairperson, IAJGS Public Records Access Monitoring Committee
