How to find a participant in World War II on the Internet

Thanks to the development of information technology today, anyone can find information about a relative who was missing or died during the Great Patriotic War. You can do this through one of the many specially created sites.

Instruction manual

Before you start the search, collect as much useful information as possible about your missing relative (name, surname, patronymic, date of recruitment, military rank, old photographs, etc.). As practice shows, one name and surname in order to find a WWII veteran is not enough. Detailed information about a person will not only facilitate the search, but will also increase the likelihood of achieving a positive result.

The easiest way to find a participant in the military operations of 1941-1945 is to resort to electronic databases. There are a lot of similar resources on the Internet and they are all in the public domain. The largest data banks include the websites www.podvignaroda.ru, www.obd-memorial.ru, www.pamyat-naroda.ru and www.moypolk.ru. Information for electronic databases is obtained by volunteers who are engaged in archaeological excavations in the field of operations, as well as by those who, by the nature of their activities, are somehow related to WWII veterans (social services, law enforcement officials and medical personnel). Information about the participants of the Second World War is constantly updated and supplemented, so it makes sense to search for the missing fighter through electronic databases several times a month. To start a search for a person, you must enter in the search bar his name and date of birth. All other information that could be found before the start of the search is noted in the extended form.

If the search in the largest databases did not yield results, then you can search for a person who disappeared during the Great Patriotic War in memory books. They contain information about people killed in wartime, whose remains were found during excavations and identified. Such thematic resources include the following sites: rf-poisk.ru, domestic.ru and soldat.ru.

Also, in search of a WWII participant, electronic libraries containing old military newspapers and memoirs (oldgazette.ru, www.rkka.ru) or archives where documents about military operations are stored (www.archives.ru, www.rusarchives.ru, archive.mil.ru, rgvarchive.ru, rgaspi.org and rgavmf.ru).