Soviet "Kniga Pamiati"/memorial books

[Mel Comisarow melcom4@gmail.com]

X-No-archive: yes
The Summer 2017 issue of Avotayntu has an article by Anna Royzner on
"Researching Russian-Jewish Ancestry...". One section of the article
discusses searching in Soviet archives and mentions the WWII memorial
books that are stored therein. These memorial books, "Kniga Pamiati"
list Red Army Soldiers from all over the Soviet Union, who were killed
in WWII. The volumes are organized by place of enlistment, and within a
given volume are arranged alphabetically by family name. The individual
entries, if complete, list family name, given name, patronymic, "Soviet
Nationality" (Russian, Ukrainian, Jewish, Greek, Bulgarian, Armenian,
Georgian, German, and so on), civilian occupation, military rank,
birthdate, birthplace, place of death, death date and circumstance of
death (KIA, died of wounds, MIA, etc. These books were printed in the
1990s by governments. Also there is a published Kniga Pamiati that
lists civilians from the city of Dnepropetrovsk who were killed in WWII.
There is also a three volume set of Kniga Pamiati, with more volumes to
come, of Jewish Red Army KIAs. These books also lists at least some
people who were murdered by the Germans in ghettos. The Jewish Kniga
Pamiati were published by the Jewish War Veterans Association in Moscow.
It is particularly important to check both the Soviet regional Kniga
Pamiati and the Jewish Kniga Pamiati. I know of Jews who were listed in
the Society books, but not the Jewish books, and vice versa. American
and Canadian libraries have the these Kniga Pamiati. Go to your local
library and type Kniga Pamiati into the library search engine to locate
the memorial books for your regions of interest. . Once you locate one
of these books you have to find a library who will lend it via
interlibrary loan. This is no problem in the US and Canada. I don't
know about elsewhere. To use these books you will have to know the
Cyrillic alphabet, but this is not difficult to learn.

Mel Comisarow
Vancouver, BC
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