Crossing Historical Borders in the Carpathians

Recently I have been on a mini-vacation, hiking in the Carpathian mountains. These mountains stretch across a number of Eastern European countries: Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Ukraine, Serbia and Romania. 

My trip was from Budapest, Hungary, via the region of Maramureș, Romania, to Zakarpattya and Ivano-Frankivsk regions of Ukraine. This is a very picturesque area, with hills, valleys, rivers and, of course, mountains.

As it happens in Eastern Europe, we crossed a number of current borders:

the European Union and Schengen area borders, as well as Hungarian-Romanian and Romanian-Ukrainian state borders. But also typically for this area, we crossed multiple historical borders: the one of the Kingdom of Hungary and Austrian monarchy, between historical regions Maramoros, Carpathian Ruthenia and Galicia, as well as Romania - Czechoslovakia and Czechoslovakia - Poland inter-war borders.

The 1920 border between Czechoslovakia and Poland was even represented by physical artifacts - concrete border columns on top of the ridge along one of the hiking trails.

The hiking trail along the 1920 border. On the right side you can see one of the columns.

Lopsided, covered with moss and mold, the inscriptions on the columns were still readable. Letter "P" on one side stands for Poland, and "CS" on another side stands for Czechoslovakia. 1920 is the year, when the border was demarcated.

A border stone on top of peak Turkul

"CS" for Czechoslovakia. 1920.

"P" for Poland. 1920.

On top of the stone there were notches in the direction of the next border stone.

Nowadays this is the administrative border between Transcarpathia (formerly Czechoslovakia) and Ivano-Frankivsk (Galicia, formerly Poland) regions of Ukraine.

In this area borders changed very frequently even by Eastern European standards. This is why researching ancestors from Carpatho-Ruthenia and Galicia is so challenging, yet so fascinating.

A New Database on Hungarian Refugees, 1918 - 1928

 

http://gallery.hungaricana.hu

A new online database, that can be used for Hungarian genealogy research, has become available and searchable both in Hungarian and in English. If you have ancestors or relatives, who lived in Hungary during and after First World War, it is worth checking out.

The database includes over 15,000 names of those, who fled to Hungary from its former territories in the aftermath of WWI, between 1918 and 1928. The data contains their names, as well as previous place of residence, occupation and the place of arrival in Hungary.

The sources for the database were the documentation of the Hungarian Railways, other archival documents, information from the local newspapers, in particular, Erdélyi Hírek (Transylvania News), reporting on the arrival of refugees in 1920-1921.

The project was completed jointly by the Trianon 100 research team, Noran Libro Publishing House and István Dékány, the author of "The Orphans of Trianon" book. It is dedicated to the upcoming 99th anniversary of the Trianon Treaty. Hungarian speakers can watch this video on the creation of the database. 

Genealogical Data Supports the 'Grandmother Hypothesis'

Source: https://www.facebook.com/KompotIsLife/

The so-called grandmother hypothesis suggests that as humans started to live longer, grandparents began to play a crucial role in reproductive success. With the appearance of grandparents more human babies were born, and they were more likely to live longer.

Earlier this year, two new studies, published in Current Biology, were reported to add evidence for this theory. Interestingly, in these studies biologists and anthropologists used the kind of documents that genealogists normally work with: population censuses and church records. Specifically, they analyzed these records in terms of the effect grandmothers had on their grandchildren’s number and survival.

Canadian researchers analyzed the data of the pre-industrial French settlers in the St. Lawrence Valley during the 17th and 18th centuries. Their study confirmed that reproductive success was higher when grandmothers were alive. Grandmothers who were alive allowed their daughters to increase their number of offspring born by 2.1 and to increase their number of offspring surviving to 15 years of age by 1.1 compared to when grandmothers were dead.

This effect decreased with grandmothers living far away from their daughters. As geographic distance increased, the number of offspring born and lifetime reproductive success decreased.

A team of researchers from Finland worked with birth and death records from the Finnish church books from 1731-1895. They found that having a maternal grandmother aged 50–75 improved grandchild survival. Women, whose mothers were not living nearby, had higher chances of death.

However, there were age limitations to the grandmothers' ability to provide help to young grandchildren. Researchers found that co-residence with paternal grandmothers aged 75+ decreased grandchild survival. It is not clear from the summary, however, whether or not the paternal lineage was a factor in this case. Maternal vs. paternal grandmother roles is subject to a whole scientific discussion. But in this case it might be simply because of the pre-industrial family structure: co-residing with paternal grandparents was more common.

In any case, it looks like genealogical data provides support to the "grandmother hypothesis". Children who were cared for by older women in the family had better chances of survival. The biggest positive effect on the grandchildren fitness and survival was from the maternal grandmothers aged 50–75, who lived in vicinity with their grandchildren.

I have not found similar research with Eastern European records, but it would be interesting to have more of such cross-disciplinary studies. As Eastern European genealogists, we could call it "the Babushka effect".

 

Were Frida Kahlo’s Ancestors From Hungary?

For decades it had been widely accepted that Frida’s paternal ancestors were Jews from Hungary, based on her own words. She wrote in her diary the following: “My paternal grandparents, who were Hungarians, were born in Arad, Hungary, and moved to Germany, when they were already married. It was here, in Baden Baden, that their children, including my father Guillermo Kahlo, were born.” Arad is a town in Romania, that used to be part of the Kingdom of Hungary. It came as a complete surprise, when in 2005 German researchers Gaby Franger and Rainer Huhle published a book, in which they demonstrated that Frida’s father Guillermo Kahlo’s ancestors were Lutherans from Germany at least since the 18th century. 

My Grandparents My Parents and Me, 1936 by Frida Kahlo. Source: www.fridakahlo.org

A quick last name analysis of the surname Kahlo also suggests its German origin. This surname distribution map shows Kahlo as a valid, but relatively rare surname, with 83 representatives currently living in Germany. There is a similar last name, Kahl, which is much more common in modern Germany. The two could have the same root. Also, records from the FamilySearch database show people named Kahlo mostly being from Germany.

Although Franger and Huhle’s research seems to give a definitive answer, there are still many questions in this story. Naturally, in Hungary there is a vivid interest to this aspect of the painter’s biography. One of the focal points of Frida Kahlo exhibition in the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest, Hungary, held in July-November 2018, was her connection to Hungary. Even though the curator of the exhibition Adriana Lantos acknowledged the lack of evidence for Kahlo's Hungarian roots, the respective exhibit seems to leave the question open: “We can only trust that new, earlier unknown documents will become available in the future that will reveal the truth of the matter”.

Picture taken at the Frida Kahlo exhibition in Budapest, 2018

So, why did Frida maintain that her father was of Jewish Hungarian origin?


There are a couple of speculations. Some researchers think that she did not want to associate herself with Germany because of WWII, and for the same reason she may have liked the idea of being Jewish. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that Frida did not mention her Jewish origin until 1936, when antisemitic legislation was adopted in Germany.

As to the Hungarian identity she claimed, many think it is connected with Nickolas Muray, a famous photographer of Hungarian Jewish origin, with whom she had a decade-long relationship. Muray's photography was published in Harper’s Bazar, Vogue and The New York Times. He also competed at the 1928 and 1932 Summer Olympics in the fencing events.

Now, if with the Jewish and Hungarian identities there are some plausible speculations, it is harder to come up with an explanation of how Arad came into the picture. A publicist from Transylvania Péter Puskel mentions his futile efforts to investigate Frida’s possible connection to Arad.

My own quick online research on Muray’s ancestry did not reveal any apparent connection with Arad, either. He was born as Miklós Mandl in Szeged, Hungary, in 1892. Although Szeged is only 100 km (about 62 miles) away from Arad, it is not enough to assume a connection here. Miklós' birth record lists his father as Samu Mandl, a grocer from Albert Irsa and his mother as Klára Lóvit from Nagy Abony. Albertirsa was located in Pest county, while Nagy Abony, now called Veľké Blahovo, is in Slovakia. 

At Miklós' birth record there is a note, that he changed his surname to “Murai”. So, his emigration to the U.S. was already under this last name. As per Nick Muray’s naturalization files, he immigrated in 1913. I found a 1914 ship manifest of his brother Stefan Murai, whose contacts were father Samu in Budapest and brother Nicholas Muray in Brooklyn, NY. Stefan’s place of birth is rather difficult to read, but it looks like “Kispest, Delegyhaza”, which may be Délegyháza in Pest county. So, again, Arad is nowhere is sight…

Another Frida’s known Hungarian connection was Martin Munkácsi (born Márton Mermelstein), also an American photographer of Jewish Hungarian descent. He was the author of a number of famous photos of Frida and her husband Diego Riviera. Martin Munkácsi was born in born in Kolozsvár, then Hungary, now Cluj-Napoca in Romania. Even though both Cluj and Arad are part of Transylvania region, it is still not providing enough explanation of Frida’s “choice” of her paternal ancestral town.
 
And lastly, another touch to Frida’s Hungarian mystery: a copy of the letter she wrote in Hungarian to Nickolas Muray. It was on display at the exhibition.

Source

Translation:

Nick,

I love you like an angel. You are a lily-of-the-valley, my dear. 
I will never forget you, never, never. 
You are my whole life. I hope that you will not forget this, either. 
Frida.






The language of the letter is quite curious. On one hand, the text is in proper Hungarian. On the other hand, it has multiple spelling mistakes (like missing diacritics, compound words written separately, etc.). It feels like it was either written by a Hungarian native speaker, who did not learn how to write properly (as it happens, for example, with émigré children), or by a non-native who wrote down a phrase learned by ear. It is not known, whether Frida indeed wrote this letter on her own, or got help from a Hungarian acquaintance.
In any case, there are many sides to this puzzle.

 

How To Search for Russian WWI Records Online

Some time ago I have written about online resources for Second World War Soviet records, which can be accessed here. There has been a great interest in the First World War research, as well, especially as this year will mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the Great War. The number of participants and casualties were so great, that most Europeans had ancestors or relatives involved in WWI.

In this post I will put together the top online resources for researching individuals fighting in WWI in the Russian Imperial army. It is estimated that 1,700,000 Russian soldiers and officers were killed and 3,749,000 were wounded in this war. Naturally, these resources do not only include the territory of contemporary Russia, but also other territories, that were part of the Russian empire at the time. Although the Russian WWI databases are not yet as comprehensive as those for WWII, but there have been significant efforts in this direction. Here is my summary of the best available resources and some of the expected developments. 

• "In the memory of the heroes of the Great War of 1914-1918" (“Памяти героев Великой войны 1914-1918 годов”) is a web-portal, featuring the database of the fallen and awarded soldiers and officers. It was launched by the Russian Ministry of Defense with the support of the Federal Archival Agency and the Russian Historical Society and as of now has the most complete information on Russia's participation in the First World War. It contains 2,278,000 records from the “Card Index on accounting the losses in First World War 1914-1918”. The use of geolocation data of the battles and contemporary maps allows to visualize the route of a given person during WWI. Search is possible by multiple parameters, however, only in Russian. Here is a helpful guide by Vera Miller on searching this database without knowing Russian.

The encouraging news is that on July 20, 2018 the Ministry of Defense of Russian Federation has announced plans to allocate additional 700 mln Rubles for further development of the above database. Of course, it will take some time for the plans to be realized, but at least there is hope for future improvements. Among the plans are to add 4,530,000 records to the Card index of the Bureau for accounting losses in WWI 1914-1918; 3,150,000 records on prisoners of war (lower ranks); 5,100,000 records with names of the soldiers and officers perished in WWI; 830,000 award documents. I will follow the developments closely and will post updates on this blog. Stay tuned!

• First World War, 1914–1918 (Электронная база «Алфавитные списки потерь нижних чинов 1914-1918 гг.») is a database of 1,337,430 personal records of the WWI soldiers (lower ranks) of the Russian empire, compiled by the Union of Revival of Pedigree Traditions. The search form is available in English, but the results come up in Russian language. However, I highly recommend to spell names and other key words in Cyrillic letters, to avoid mistakes due to transliteration. As always, try different spellings of names and places.

• Nominal Roll of killed, wounded and missing persons of lower ranks 1914-1920 (Именной список убитым, раненым и без вести пропавшим нижним чинам [Текст]. - Петербург: Военная тип. имп. Екатерины Великой, 1914-1920. - 27 см. № 781-800. - [1914]. - С.12481-12800: табл.) is a digitized and searchable original document listing the victims of First World War (lower ranks) from Russian Empire, available on the website of Russian State Library.

• Officers of the Russian Imperial Army (Офицеры русской императорской армии) is a database of the Russian officers (soldiers not included here!) who served between 1900 and 1917. It contains 60,339 personnel cards and 24,755 photographs. This database is in Russian, but you can also use this link showing this page google-translated into English. For those who are not Russian language users this step-by-step instruction on how to use this database will be useful.

• Prisoners of the First World War ICRC historical archives, 1914-1918 is an online database that contains data from the International Red Cross archives, for all nationalities that took part in the Great war, including the Russian army. This resource and the search are fully available in English.

• Personal History project (Проект "Персональная история") offers a number of relatively small databases and lists related to Russian Imperial Army personnel, including First World War. They are relatively small and not user-friendly, but still can be used as additional resource.

How to Research WWII Ostarbeiters and Displaced Persons

During World War II approximately 12 million people from the Nazi occupied territories were conscripted and deported for forced labour in Germany. Two thirds of them came from Eastern Europe, mostly those from Ukraine and Russia, and are known as Ostarbeiters (“Eastern workers”).

At the end of the war, in 1945, cca 11 million former detainees, most of whom were forced labourers and prisoners of war, were freed. However, they could not immediately move freely. While waiting for decisions on their repatriation or obtaining a refugee status and further emigration, they were organized in so-called displaced persons camps (DP camps).

In the turmoil of these dramatic events millions of families were separated and lost connections. Even now, many decades after the events, a sizeable part of Eastern European genealogy projects involve uncovering the mysteries of the families torn apart by WWII. 

In this post I will share the main resources and tips for starting research on Ostarbeiter or DP family lines. As always, there is not one single list or resource to check. I recommend trying all of the available options, inquire at as many repositories as possible, and then piece the puzzle together.

1. The International Tracing Service (ITS), Bad Arolsen, Germany

This is by far the most important resource of all. ITS was founded immediately after WWII specifically to help reunite survivors with their families. Its archives, holding one of the world’s largest collections on the Nazi forced labour and displaced persons, have been accessible for research since 2007. The Central Name Index of the ITS with 50 million reference cards on 17.5 million persons. It includes original documents on the registration of the survivors after 1945, prisoner identity cards, correspondence between survivors and their families, and many other types of documents. A complete inventory of the ITS’s archival collections and other indexing information can be found here.

How to access ITS documents? Unfortunately, most of the documents are not accessible online. However, a small part of them has recently become available here and there are plans to extend the online collection in the future. But given the tremendous volume of materials, this process is likely to take many years.

In order to obtain documents about your DP or Ostarbeiter relative, you can fill in an online Request form and the ITS personnel will do the research for you free of charge. On the downside, be ready to wait for the results for months or even years (exceptions can be made, however, in case of explained urgency of the matter).

Given the overload of ITS with requests, it may be a good idea to inquire at (or visit in person) one of the ITS’ partner institutions that have access to the ITS Central Name Index, namely:

• Archives de l'État en Belgique, Brussels, Belgium
• Archives Nationales, Pierrefitte-sur Seine, France
• Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel
• Centre de Documentation et de Recherche sur la Résistance, Luxemburg
• Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Warsaw, Poland
• The Wiener Library, London, United Kingdom
• US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, USA

2. International Red Cross Organization in respective country

International Red Cross was directly involved in the relief efforts and assistance to the WWII prisoners of war and other detainees in the Third Reich. Between 1954 and 2012 IRC was in charge of administration of the ITS. Nevertheless, the resources that the two institutions hold are not identical and therefore it is worth requesting information at both ITS and IRC in parallel. The advantage of the IRC is its world-wide network of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, as well as museums, archives and international organizations that can be of great help in researching the fate of displaced persons and their families. Although the IRC’s focus is also gradually shifting to the DPs of the current or recent international crises, it still accepts inquiries as to the WWII DPs.

Currently, the IRC has a program called “Restoring Family Links” where one can submit a request on a family member. Tracing services are free of charge. To initiate research, contact your local Red Cross chapter. Just to mention a few IRC chapters, commonly involved in WWII displaced persons research:

• American Red Cross Restoring Family Links program took over the requests to the American Red Cross Holocaust and War Victims Tracing Service, closed in November 2012. This service is not for genealogical traces, but may be done on behalf of family members with direct ties to victims of World War II and the Holocaust.
• The German Red Cross Tracing Service. Queries on the missing of World War Two are still arriving at the German Red Cross at a rate of 8,000 per year. German government funding would expire in 2023, so the German Red Cross officials advise to anyone who wants to send queries, to do it as soon as possible.
• Center for Search and Information of the Russian Red Cross is relevant for research involving all the ex-Soviet countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Republic of Moldova, Central Asian countries. To initiate research, you can download a request form, find contact information etc. (available in Russian only). A tip from my own experience with this institution is that following a request with a phone call can speed up the process.

3. A Memorial or Archives of a Particular DP / Labour Camp

In addition to the above tracing services, try to find resources that are specific to the particular place of detention in question. There are plenty of resources, such as memorials, museums, small archives, dedicated to a DP or forced labour camp. These can offer unique materials, such as personal archives, oral histories, memories, found nowhere else. Examples of local museums and memorials of particular camps or survivors communities:

• Memorial to the Jewish Displaced Persons Camp at Zeilsheim, Germany
• Baltic DP Project by Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture, Chicago, USA
• Buchenwalder Museum Berlin, Germany (accept inquiries)

These websites, listing places of detention, can be used to identify the needed camp and basic information about it for further tracing:

• Forced Labour in the National Socialist State web-portal by the German Federal Archives and The EVZ Foundation (Foundation for Remembrance, Responsibility and Future). Features a Directory of Places of Detention. With different search options: Search by keyword, camp, location, country. contains information on around 3,800 concentration camps and other places of confinement, their period of use as place of imprisonment for forced labourers, their geographical location, as well as literature and source references.
• Lists of all DP camps can be found at these two resources: http://www.dpcamps.org/ and http://dpcamps.ort.org/.

4. Searchable Online databases 

• Africa, Asia and Europe, Passenger Lists of Displaced Persons, 1946-1971.
  A database on Ancestry.com from Arolsen Archives, Germany. It consists of passenger lists of immigrants leaving Germany and other European ports and airports between 1946-1971.
• Europe, Registration of Foreigners and German Persecutees, 1939-1947.  Another database on Ancestry.com from Arolsen Archives. This one consists of foreigners and German persecutees in Germany between 1939-1947 who were persecuted by public institutions, social securities and companies.
• Online Archive Forced Labour 1939-1945. Six hundred interviews with former forced labourers and DPs from 26 countries, as well as many other related materials.

• For Jewish research: Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database by the the Holocaust Survivors and Victims Resource Center. The Museum has many other resources that could assist you in researching the fate of victims of the WWII. It also offers free reference services. 

• For Polish research: Personal losses and victims of repression under German occupation ("Straty osobowe i ofiary represji pod okupacją niemiecką"), a database launched in 2006 by the Institute of People’s Memory. It includes prisoners of labour camps, transit camps, displaced persons etc. Search in English. 

• For Soviet research: “The Other Side” (“Та сторона”) is  a Russian resource on prisoners of war, contains information, interviews, biographies, cca 2 400 names and stories. It features 300 interviews recorded from the late 1980s to the latest, and about 400,000 letters from former Ostarbeiters received by the Memorial society in 1990-1991. A database with 320 thousand names of Soviet Ostarbeiters, based on the mentioned letters, has been launched. Here is a detailed blog post on how to use the database. 

Further Resources

• Guide to the Records of the Displaced Person Camps and Centers in Germany 1945-1952 by YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
• Records Relating to World War II Era Refugees at the U.S. National Archives
• A reading list on Ostarbeiters blog

How To Search for the Soviet WWII Records Online

Beginning of May is marking the anniversary of the last days of World War II in Europe. In the ex-Soviet countries 9th of May is known as the Victory Day. Despite it being often abused to promote nationalism and militarism, to most families, who lost their close family members, this is an important, but sad holiday. Having a great grandfather and other relatives perished in the war, I prefer to commemorate this event by remembering the deceased and reflecting on the colossal human losses in this horrible tragedy.

As a genealogist, I like to do this through documents. The good news is that researching WWII Soviet soldiers is one of the easier parts of Eastern European genealogy. The reason for this is the unique for this area degree of digitization and searchability of this subject. The online databases are very comprehensive, and impressive in their scale, even internationally. I am happy to share my tips on finding Soviet military records online.

If your ancestor / relative perished in the war, start with:

Memorial (Обобщенный банк данных «Мемориал») is a database of those Soviet soldiers who perished in WWII, launched in 2007. The database contains over 17 mln digital copies of documents about life losses of Red Army soldiers and 20 mln name entries of those who died in the Great Patriotic War. It also has information about the burials of over 5 mln soldiers and officers, as well as the names of 1 mln of Soviet prisoners of war in the Nazi captivity. The website has an English language version, including information about the project, its sources and most importantly the fields of the search. Although the search itself only works for Cyrillic letter key words, it is still a big help for non-Russian speakers to know what each field stands for. The documents found in this database are very useful for genealogical purposes. The so called “report on losses” document offers information like year and place of birth, military rank, place of death, home address and the closest relative.

If your ancestor / relative survived the war, start with:

Feat of the People (Обобщенный банк данных «Подвиг народа в Великой Отечественной войне 1941–1945 гг.») is a database on those who survived and received a military award / decoration, launched in 2010. It includes over 12,5 mln records about those who were decorated with medals "For Courage" and "For Military Merit", and cca 22 mln cards on the decorations awarded on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Victory over the Nazi Germany. Similarly to the above database, it has an English language version, with the same exception that the search words need to be in Russian. Also like the previous project, the work on this database is ongoing and constantly updated with new records. The information in this database includes the place of birth and conscription, military rank, and a detailed description of the “heroic deed” for which a person was decorated.

Next, go to this resource:

Memory of the People (Портал “Память народа”) provides a more modern and interactive database, based on the two databases, mentioned above. People and events from the military records were linked to locations, providing a unique opportunity for a great visualization. It shows you the exact itinerary of the researched person in the war on a map, from conscription till demobilization (or death), with all the battles and operations they took part in, as well as hospitalization and place of burial (if applicable). To see the itinerary visualization you need to click on "Боевой путь" button below the found entry under. On the downside, this website and the database do not have English language version.
This is how a war itinerary looks like:

Memory of the People also has a new page where you can upload or search for a photo of a Soviet WWII veteran.

Something to keep in mind, when using these databases, is that Memorial and Feat of the People require exact spelling of key words, while the Memory of the People allows for fuzzy search. 


Other resources


Documentation Centre Dresden, run by the Saxon Memorial Foundation (Die Stiftung Sächsische Gedenkstätten), helps trace victims of the Nazi regime. It offers a number of online databases, including ones on Members of the Red Army held by Germany as prisoners of war, Soviet citizens who died in Saxony, and more. The Center also accepts inquiries, in particular about the inmates of former concentration camps in Saxony.

The Immortal Regiment (Бессмертный полк России) was launched in 2015. Despite the political agenda and controversy behind the project, their database is a great tool for relative search. Its unique feature is that the names and stories of the WWII veterans are added by their relatives. So, one can not only find a WWII veteran, but also get in touch with the living relatives.

All-Russian Burial Search Center (Всероссийский информационно-поисковый центр) is a unified database of the results of the military burial search expeditions (exhumation, identifying unknown graves, and other field trip findings). Their old search can be used as well. Unfortunately, only available in Russian.

The Reclaimed Names (Возвращенные Имена) is a relatively small database, containing only 209,647 names. Among its useful features is The Siege of Leningrad database, with 631,063 names.

Veterany project (Ветераны) of a TV channel, where relatives can upload their stories, names and photos of Soviet veterans

Ukraine’s Electronic Book of Remembrance (Проект «Электронная Книга Памяти Украины 1941-1945») is a database of the Ukrainian Union of Burial Search. It contains cca 929,120 names of Soviet veterans from Ukraine.

Martyrology (Мартирологія) database by Ukraine's National Museum of Second World War. It is work in progress. So far it only contains data from Kyiv and Zhytomyr regions.

List of the victims of mass-killings in Babi Yar, a suburb of Kyiv, Ukraine, 1941—1943.

List of Persons mobilized during the Second World War in Ukrainian SSR

Book of Remembrance of Jewish Soldiers Perished in the War with Fascism 1941-1945 (Книга памяти воинов-евреев павших в боях с нацизмом 1941-1945, Volume 4, 1997, Moscow.

Finland, prisoners of war and extraditions 1939-1955 is a database compiled by the Finnish National Archives, containing information on prisoner-of-war and civilian deaths on both Finnish prisoner-of-war-camps and camps for civilian internees in Eastern Karelia.

Soldat.ru offer a list of Soviet prisoners-of-war who died in Finland, 1941-1944, and a list of Burials of the Soviet military personnel, who died in Finland in 1941 - 1944.
 
Perm Krai prisoner-of-war database contains information of the captured soldiers from this area, the date and place of their captivity.

Soviet military graves in Hungary provides a list of Hungarian towns with burial places of Soviet military personnel, with details on their location, names of the buried persons.