Another treasure for researching World War I heroes

Databases are aplenty for World War II heroes but World War I heroes haven’t been forgotten. The newest database for World War I heroes is a great research tool, with the perk of having scanned military archive records.

Many people researching their ancestors from the former Russian Empire are challenged by using Russian websites. But In memory of the heroes of the Great War of 1914-1918 can be easily used with the directions below, even without knowing Russian.

The website has 2,278,000 entries on soldiers who received awards, went missing and/or died. The same information with scanned military records can’t be found on subscription-based websites.

In memory of the heroes of the Great War of 1914-1918  is free of cost and registration.

Here’s a peek at the search page translated into English, using this link:

To search this database, all keywords must be in Russian. Make sure to open Google Translate in the next window to the database.

If Google Translate can’t translate your ancestors’ names and birthplaces, use Transliterating English to Russian in One Step.

A few words won’t translate using the above link on the database’s search boxes- Губерния (region); Уезд: (county); Волость (parish) and Населенный пункт (community).

Here’s how to get great results:

1. Use only confirmed information on people being searched. If a death year is not confirmed through other sources, skip that box.
2. If the database doesn’t give any matches, redo the search by using less information.
3.  When family information is limited, try searching by surname and village.
4. If you are searching for more than one person, copy and paste all the keywords in Russian for each person into a Microsoft Word or another word processing document.

If you can’t read Russian, copy and paste each page of results into Google Translate.

It’s good to know if your ancestors’ surnames or villages translate into other words in English (such as cobbler, cabbage, etc,). You can double-check this by copying and pasting the surnames and villages name in Russian into Google Translate and viewing the English translations.

Some surnames and village names will translate letter by letter into similar-sounding Roman letters.

The scanned records from military archives can be downloaded from the website, drag the images to the desktop on Macs and right-click on PCs. If you don’t read Russian, do a print screen, save it to a Word document and paste the translated text from Google Translate.

If you want to try your luck with other databases, click here for other free databases.

The adventurous types can try to find more information on the Internet with new information found in the database in Russian. Here are some hints:
Secrets of searching the Internet in Russian and Ukrainian like a native speaker

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