New database created to document Volga Germans deported to Siberia

Russian organization Memorial is busy with another database. This time it is documenting the Volga Germans who were deported from the Krasnoyarsk Territory to Siberia in 1941.

More than 31,000 Volga Germans are documented in the database here and the database is an ongoing project. The database details the victims’ full name, birth year, birthplace, nationality, profession and place of work before deportation.

I do not know another website that has this information in English. Follow the directions below on how to use the website with Google Translate if you don’t know how to use Russian websites. The database can be viewed in English with this link.

Victims of the deportations are listed by neighborhoods of the Krasnoyarsk Territory. If nothing is found on your relatives or ancestors, look in all the neighborhoods.

The project is ongoing so check each month for the people being researched. Project manager Natalya Sarchenko estimates 70,000 people are documented in Krasnoyarsk Territory state archives for the deportation of Volga Germans.

Those looking at the database in Russian with little familiarity of the language will find the order of the letters helpful:

А Б В Г Д Е Ё Ж З И К Л М Н О П Р С Т У Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Щ Ы Э Ю Я

Here’s how to take advantage of this database without knowing Russian.

• Have Google Translate in the next window for translating names and places. The text can be copied and pasted for translation.
• Downloading the Google Translate app or another web browser translator for your device is highly recommended. It is best to do this search on a laptop or desktop computer.
• If Google Translate doesn’t work for translating certain names, try Transliterating English to Russian in One Step.
• Don’t eliminate a potential match, based on the birth year being off by a year or two. The people forced to give their personal information to Russian officials were scared and traumatized.
• Open a document for copying and pasting results. Also, keep a list of people, surnames and villages/towns searched in a document.
• If results can’t be found on direct relatives, try looking for cousins, no matter how distant. It sometimes takes a random cousin to bring new life to research.
• Make screen shots of positive and potential results.

Those who didn’t find any relatives or ancestors in the database can try this database of deported Volga Germans.

Additional information and resources to research Volga German ancestry can be found on these websites: The Center for Volga German Studies at Concordia University and American Historical Society of Germans from Russia. Useful Facebook genealogy groups for German Russian ancestry can be found here.

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Other posts on WWII databases:
Arolsen Archives updates its WWII database once again
Russian archives introduce new WWII database on Nazi victims
New database documents 1 million WWII citizen heroes who defended Moscow
More than 8 million records posted to massive World War II soldier database for the former USSR