Hello my fellow JGeners,

I am hoping someone might be able to help me find out of there are
some databases or lists somewhere of Jews who were taken prisoners
into the Russian army during the war?

I am trying to help a friend find out what became of his Uncle, Yosef
Yochanon Weiss (or Weisz), (born in 1919) >from Simlau, Transylvania,
who was taken as a prisoner into the Russian army and was never seen
again by his family.

I'd love to help him but really have no idea where to look, or if such
lists exist. Does anyone know about this?

Thanks for any ideas you might have,

Feige Kauvar Stern
Cleveland, OH

What were the circumstances of this "capture"? I knew a Jew in my shul
many years ago who was an actual war prisoner of the Russians. He had
been in a Romanian Labor Battalion on the Eastern Front. Romania was
allied with Germany and contributed troops to the German offensive in
the south. I suspect many units, especially the labor units that
included Romanian Jews, surrendered rather quickly. This gentleman
always brought his home-made pickles to our kiddish, saying he was a
pickle-maker in the Romanian army. (The Romanian Army marches on its
pickles!) On the other hand, many young Jews who fled Eastward in 1939
when Poland was invaded >from two sides wound up drafted by the Red Army
or after Germany invaded Russia, put into the Polish units organized by
the Russians. Millions of Russian young men served in the Red Army
and their fates are unknown.

Jules Levin/ Los Angeles

Jews were put into forced labour battalions, which were used to
support the Hungarian troops. They were not issued weapons or
uniforms, and kept under armed guard. and they were shipped out to
the Russian front, where many perished or were captured as prisoners
of war by the soviets.

There is a Hungarian database,
http://www.hadifogoly.hu/web/hadifogoly/index ,
which contains casualties and prisoners of war, including (Jewish)
forced labourers. It's based on Hungarian and Soviet records. The 3
input fields, in order are: surname, given name, and date of birth,
and the button says "search". You can deselect sets of records, such
as hungarian or russian (sic), but it's best to start with all of them.

and there is a museum in Israel of the forced labour battalions, which
has a searchable database:
http://www.tm-it.co.il/avodat-kfiya/show_item.asp?levelId=65072 .
the three search fields are: name, place of birth, and regiment number.

For both sites, it's helpful to be able to read Hungarian.

....... tom klein, toronto

PS. My father was a prisoner of war in Russia,