One in five Moldovan WWII soldiers died; online database lists the missing
The National Archives Agency has made a significant digital collection available to the public, containing the personal data of tens of thousands of Moldovan soldiers who went missing during World War II. This resource is intended to help relatives searching for information about their grandparents or great-grandparents who disappeared during the war.
The seven volumes of the "Book of Memory," previously edited by the Ministry of Defense between 2002 and 2005, contain the names of approximately 56,000 individuals from the Republic of Moldova who were recruited into the Red Army and died on the battlefield between 1944 and 1945.
These volumes are organized by districts and localities and include details such as the soldiers' first and last names, year of birth, date and place of death, as well as the military unit to which they belonged.
In many instances, the place of death is listed only by the name of the country—such as Germany, Poland, Hungary, or Czechoslovakia—without additional details about specific localities.
The authors of the project acknowledge that the lists are not exhaustive, as they rarely include individuals who fought on the Eastern Front between 1941 and 1944, whether in the Red Army or in the Romanian Army. Additionally, there is a lack of data concerning districts on the left bank of the Nistru.
According to the National Archives Agency, approximately 260,000 people from the Republic of Moldova fought against Nazi Germany and its allies in the Red Army. Of these, nearly one in five lost their lives at the front.
One of the volumes specifically includes localities with a majority Bulgarian and Gagauz population in the Taraclia district and the Gagauzia Autonomous Region.
All volumes are available for download as PDFs and can be searched by name, locality, or other keywords.
For those unable to find their relatives in these lists, it is recommended to contact the territorial military centers, where archives of individuals mobilized in the Red Army and the Romanian Army are maintained.
The project was carried out by the National Archives Agency with support from the Agency for Military Science and Memory of the Ministry of Defense, in collaboration with the National Library of the Republic of Moldova.
It is noteworthy that only 14 participants in the Second World War remain alive in the Republic of Moldova today. The Parliament has decided to grant each of them an indemnity of 30,000 lei in commemoration of May 9.
