Friday, October 17, 2014

OBD MEMORIAL: Updated

OBD/ (HBS) MEMORIAL: Updated
or

I had blogged about this Russian language military site a several years ago. It is such an important research tool that I thought that it bears repeating here. It includes a summary of information for the individual and, sometimes, copies of original documents (in Russian).

According to the description, “The main objective of the project--to enable millions of people to determine the fate of or find information about their dead or missing relatives, to determine the place of burial.” 
It is an open access data bank of personal information about those who were killed in action & reported missing during the Great Patriotic War (WW II).

According to the description, the project contains about 17 million digital copies of documents, 20 million personal records of the Red Army losses, initial burial locations of 5 million soldiers & officers, &1 million prisoners of war. 

The project's curator is the Ministry of Defense Agency.

Top Right Corner: click "sign in" in order to register.

TO ACCESS INFORMATION:
There is an "English" button (top right-"EN") but there is often more info.  available if you enter information using Russian Cyrillic. 
Sometimes it will say no info. avail. when input in English but will have available data when using Russian.
To do so:
1. Translate surname (also first, patronymic, if known) to Russian.
 (Google Translate is good, if you are not literate in Russian Cyrillic):
—Write in your language in left box (after selecting the appropriate language tab)>> 
-- Choose "Russian" for right box>> 
-- Click translate>> 
--Highlight & copy the name as written in Russian. 
https://translate.google.com/
EX. LURIA Anatoly Savelevich >>>> Лурия Анатолий Савельевич

2.  Use an online translator, if needed, to read the page. 
--Fill in Surname (at least) in grey section- top row, left box--- be sure to use the name in RUSSIAN. 
(Using the highlighted/copied name, "paste" it into the surname box)
 http://www.obd-memorial.ru/html/default.htm

--the middle box is for the first name; last box is for the patronym--you can search with only the last name if necessary--the patronym in my case was Savelevich.

(it also asks for year of birth, rank, but you can search w/o these.)






3. Click on a name. (It will be in Russian unless you used an online translator).

to get to an Information reports page.

4. This page gives:

 ---DOB, POB, Date & place of recruitment, Last place of service, Military rank, Reason for death, Source name, Fond source, Inventory #, Case #. 

---A copy or copies of the original document (s) if available.

In my case, on top right, in blue, was a link "Next found document", with additional information from burial lists, another page had information from the Book of Memory.

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