How can you find out where a person is buried if only his personal information is known? What organization can I contact to obtain this type of information and are there public databases? We’ll talk about how to find out where a person is buried and what needs to be done in this article.

How to find a grave in a cemetery

Not knowing where the grave of your deceased loved one is is a problem that can be resolved quite simply. Each cemetery has registration books containing information about all those buried in a given territory, about the years of their life and the places that were allocated for graves. Cemetery staff will help you find your way around.

Or you can use other options.

Where to start searching for the deceased

To find out where the desired burial is located, you can contact the registry office. Here you need to go to the death registration department. To obtain the necessary information from the specified department, you will need to present a death certificate and confirm that you are related to the deceased, or justify the reason why you need to obtain this type of information. The registry office employee can provide information not only about where the person died and in which cemetery he was buried, but also about the last place of residence of the deceased.

Based on the data received, you will need to drive up to the specified cemetery and there you will receive information about the specific burial place (it is stored by the cemetery administration).

But how can you find out where a person is buried if there is no death certificate? Then the situation becomes somewhat more complicated, but not everything is so fatal.

The minimum data you need to have for this is full name the deceased, the year of his birth, the date of death (or at least the most narrowed period of time in which this event occurred) and the last place of residence. Information about the place of residence of the deceased allows us to guess in which city he is buried. Next, you need to find out how many cemeteries there are on the territory of a given settlement, and then follows a long and painstaking work of searching for data about a specific person in the archives of these cemeteries. You can search not only by a specific date of death, but also in general by all burials performed in a known period of time.

If we talk about more simple and accessible way, then you can simply ask relatives or close people who were at the funeral. Even if a person was not directly present at the ceremony, it is quite possible that he at least knows in which cemetery the burial took place - and this will significantly narrow the search area.

As an alternative, you can resort to the services of specialists engaged in private investigation activities. Of course, this option is not the cheapest, but the result can be obtained quite quickly and without putting any effort into it. Search agencies usually complete the task in 1-2 weeks, and full payment for services is made only after receiving the desired result.

You can also try to find the data you need on the Internet. Now the network has a huge number of databases containing information about the location of burials. However, these databases are unofficial, so no one is responsible for the accuracy of the information contained in them. But the information there is free, and you have nothing to lose except a minor time investment, so why not try?

nsovetnik.ru

In Russia there is not yet a unified database on burials in cemeteries in Russia.

Sooner or later in a person’s life there comes a time when he begins to become interested in the past of his family. As a rule, this interest leads to the search for burials.

Unfortunately, current state The Russian funeral service industry does not make it possible to quickly and easily find the grave of a deceased person. The problem is related to the lack of a unified database on burials in cemeteries in Russia.

Previously, information about the grave was stored exclusively in the archives of the cemetery where the burial took place, and a unified register of burials - common for the entire country - was not maintained. But paper documentation is not always reliable and is often lost.

Many archives were lost during the Great Patriotic War. The problem of data preservation was also related to the principles of organizing the archive of citizens’ personal data in Russian Federation and the USSR (for example, registry offices register the fact of death, but not funerals).

Now it has been decided to create a system for recording cemeteries and a unified database for recording burial data on the territory of the Russian Federation. A unified database of those responsible for the maintenance of the burial (grave) will also be created.

Find a grave - search methods:

Through the cemetery administration

If you know in which cemetery the grave of the deceased is located, contact the cemetery administration. It stores data about all the burials that took place: who was buried, when and in what area. If you know at least the approximate date of death of the deceased, you can quickly find the desired record.

Through the State Budgetary Institution “Ritual” (Moscow) or the regional municipal unitary enterprise “Ritual”

The cemeteries of Moscow and New Moscow are under the jurisdiction of the State Budgetary Institution “Ritual”; cemeteries in other regions are accountable to municipal ritual services. State Budgetary Institution “Ritual” and similar services have access to archives and registration books of cemeteries. Based on them, databases of burials are compiled. These databases are incomplete, but there is always a chance that with their help you will be able to find the information you need.

When contacting a funeral service, you may need a stamp death certificate. To find out the contacts and address of the municipal funeral service, you should contact information service city ​​administration, MFC or registry office.

Through the joint efforts of volunteers and the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, a open base Memorial data, containing more than 20 million records of losses during the Great Patriotic War.

There is also a database “In Memory of Heroes Great War 1914-1918." It provides information about more than 2 million participants in the First World War, including their burial places. These resources do not always indicate the exact location of the grave, but they can help determine the approximate location of the service member's death. The information obtained can help find the location of the mass grave where the remains of the deceased are buried. The Department of Defense also has detailed records of many military personnel, both those who died while serving and those who died after retiring. Relatives of the deceased can obtain this information privately by contacting the reception desk of the Ministry of Defense.

Find a relative who has a burial certificate

This document contains all the necessary information: in which cemetery the person was buried and where the grave plot is located.

Interview funeral participants

People can remember which cemetery the funeral took place in and where the grave is located. Ask your relatives for help, try to find close friends and acquaintances. If for one reason or another this is not possible, try to find the organization where he worked: one of his colleagues may have participated in the funeral himself or knew the participants. Finally, if the last place of residence of the deceased is known, try asking neighbors. Searching “through people” is often underestimated, but it often brings the desired result.

Through specialized sites for searching burials

One of the largest and most trusted resources is the Pomnim.pro website. It contains information about almost 2 million burials in 27 cities of the CIS, which often allows you to find a grave by the name of the deceased. If you were unable to find information using the existing database, the project also provides a service for searching burials on request. Some private investigation (detective) agencies are also engaged in searching for burials.

If none of the methods above helped, then you should try the following sequence of actions:

1. Determine the last place of residence of the deceased. Find out the city of residence - usually the funeral takes place in the same city where the person lived. It is advisable to find out the exact address.
2. Find the stamp's death certificate. If it is not there, then contact the registry office or MFC at the last place of residence of the deceased for a copy. To do this, you will need to provide your passport and a document confirming your relationship with the deceased (birth certificate or marriage certificate).
3. Set the date of death. This information is on the certificate. If you were unable to find or obtain a death certificate, then try to find the approximate date from personal correspondence, obituary and other records.
4. Contact the cemetery administration with available information. If the deceased died in the city with a large number cemeteries, try to find out which cemeteries were buried in the year of his death (the city administration may have this information).
5. If you are unable to determine the burial place using the cemetery’s archival data, contact the church at the cemetery. Priests in cemetery churches usually register all funeral and burial ceremonies.
6. If the previous points did not produce results, then all that remains is to try to find a grave by name in the cemetery. To do this, you will need to do painstaking and time-consuming work, examining cemetery tombstones.

Example of a burial search

Searching for the graves of heroes of the Great Patriotic War - difficult task. Dmitry I. encountered it, deciding to find the place where his grandfather, a participant in the war, died and was buried. Dmitry didn’t know much about his grandfather, only his name, year, place of birth and the fact that he died somewhere in Latvia.

Turning to the resource obd-memorial.ru, Dmitry managed to find his grandfather’s last place of service, as well as information about where and when he died. The commander of the unit where Dmitry’s grandfather served drew up a map with a burial diagram - however, the search in google maps showed that now in this place there is only a ravine and an open field.

Together with his brother and wife, Dmitry went to Latvia, to a village near Riga, where their relative was buried. Unfortunately, the map turned out to be true - at the site Dmitry found only a ditch, and only pieces of reinforcement marked the mass grave that had once been located here. After contacting the locals, the family learned that there were graves from the war in the village cemetery. However, no matter how they looked, there was no tombstone with the grandfather’s name among the graves.

Fortunately for Dmitry, one farmer remembered that in the 60s the authorities carried out the reburial of the remains of those killed in memorial cemetery neighboring city. Having gone to the indicated place, the family discovered a well-kept necropolis, where more than 2,000 liberating soldiers lie in mass graves. The names of almost all of them are known and inscribed on tombstones.

At first the search did not bring any results. But in Once again considering long list buried soldiers, it turned out that my grandfather was lying right here - during the reburial, the surname was transliterated into Latvian and back, and an error crept into the inscription on the memorial.
ritual.ru

Death is a very sad event. Nobody knows when it will strike. After a person dies, he is buried. Sometimes this information is forgotten or completely hidden from the relatives of the deceased. How to find out where a person is buried? This is not as easy to do as it might seem at first glance. You will have to take into account many features and nuances of the process. So what will be required in this or that case? What options do citizens have in relation to the task at hand?

Before starting the search, you will have to have certain information. Remember: the more information you have about the deceased, the better. After all, this way the search will happen faster.

The minimum data that must be available is the citizen’s last name, first name, and patronymic. It would also be nice to know the date of birth of the person you are looking for. This will help speed up the process in some cases.

The above points are the minimum that every person who wants to find a deceased person should have. If you can do without a date of birth, then you can’t do without a name, surname and patronymic. It’s great if you know exactly where the person died (died). If you investigate on your own, this will significantly narrow your search.

Documentation

How to find out where a person is buried? Please note that you will need a certain list of documents to complete this task.

First, you will need a death certificate of the deceased. This document will help you understand when a person died, as well as guess at what point he was buried.

You must also bring identification with you. It is advisable that this be a civil passport. Information about the deceased is not disclosed to anyone unknown. Therefore, without an ID card, it is unlikely that anyone will communicate with you.

If you are a relative of the deceased, try to take with you documents confirming your relationship. To strangers a compelling reason will be required to motivate the search for the deceased.

That's it for the list necessary documents you can finish. Sometimes people get by without them. But in this case, finding where a person was buried is not as easy as it seems. The absence of a death certificate already significantly complicates the entire process.

MARRIAGE REGISTRY

So, the first place you can go to solve the problem is the registry office. The one closest to you will do. You must take all the previously listed documents with you. The death certificate especially plays an important role here.

How to find out where a person is buried? To do this, contact the registry office, the death registration department. There, according to the available certificate, they should provide you with information about the burial. Here you can find out about the last place of residence of the deceased.

But it's not that simple. You will have to present documents proving your relationship with the deceased. Or justify your search. If those who are not relatives of the deceased do not have any compelling arguments, the registry office employees have every right refuse to provide information about where the person was buried. You shouldn't be surprised, everything is according to the law. Therefore, it is worth considering other methods. They are also very helpful when there is no death certificate.

How can you find out where a person is buried? In Moscow or any other city, this is not so important. After all, the algorithm of actions is absolutely the same. It’s worth noting right away: this method quite difficult, it takes a lot of time. It is usually used when citizens do not have a death certificate of the deceased.

We are talking about searches in the archives that the administration of each cemetery has. All that is required from you is the last name, first name, and patronymic of the deceased. It would also be nice to know your date of birth. Find out in which city the person died or lived. This will help narrow down your search. And then look at the addresses of all cemeteries in a particular area.

All that remains is to travel around each one yourself and look at the data archives. Usually this is allowed to relatives. Outsiders, as already mentioned, need compelling reasons to implement the idea.

In fact, in the archives you will search for a person by last name, first name and patronymic. Sometimes, without knowing the date of birth or death, it is almost impossible to locate the deceased. After all, there are 100% namesakes. Such people have the same surnames, first names and patronymics. So there is a possibility that your actions will not be successful.

Relatives

Another answer to the question of how to find out where a person is buried is to contact the relatives of the deceased. If you are not blood relatives of the deceased, now is the time to find such people. It is desirable that they be close - children, spouses, parents, brothers or sisters. Those who definitely had to attend the funeral.

In this case, all you need to do is ask people to tell you about the burial place. Often you have to justify why you have such knowledge. But this option only requires you to know the initials of the deceased, as well as information about his relatives.

Internet

How to find out where a person is buried? Through the Internet! Here you will need any information about the deceased. It is advisable to know your first name, last name, patronymic and date of birth. This is the most important information to implement the idea.

The Internet is now full of various services and databases offering to obtain information about any deceased person and the place of his burial. Minus this option is that usually such collections of information are unofficial. You cannot rely on their reliability. As a search option, this is not the worst method, but it is very doubtful.

Private search

There is one more approach left to solve the problem set before us. If you want to find out where a person was buried, you can contact private services that offer detective work. Such organizations independently search for graves. You will be completely freed from paperwork or any other not-so-pleasant moments.

As a rule, private search companies take about 2 weeks to complete everything. Afterwards you will receive accurate information about where the person is buried. The method is good, but you will have to pay for its implementation. From now on it is clear how to find out where a person is buried.
fb.ru

Each of us from time to time has a need to visit the graves of our deceased relatives. However, this can sometimes be difficult if you did not attend the funeral and do not know exactly which section of the cemetery the burial you need is located.

Instructions:

1. The easiest way to solve this problem is to find the closest relatives of the deceased. Most likely, they will be able to tell you where the grave is located, or give you its “address,” that is, the number of the block and burial in the cemetery. When you arrive at the cemetery itself, ask the guard or administrator to show you the burial plan (if you don’t see it immediately upon entering), which will be easy to navigate.
2. If it was not possible to find the next of kin of the deceased, and you will have to look for his burial yourself, you need to have a minimum of information about him. You probably know your first and last name. Dates of birth and death will also be needed. If they are known, very good. If not, then contact the registry office of the city or district where the person you are looking for lived on the eve of his death.
3. Having received information about the date of death of the deceased, go to the cemetery where he was buried. Upon arrival, contact the cemetery administration. By providing the last name, first name and patronymic of the person you are looking for, as well as the exact or approximate time of his death, you can receive an extract from the archive, which must be maintained at each cemetery. Keep in mind that not all cemeteries have an administrator on duty all day. In most cases, they are most likely to be found on site at the end or beginning of the working day.
4. The extract from the archival data that you will receive from the cemetery administration will indicate the block in which the grave you are looking for is located. Conduct further searches yourself. Go to the indicated area and go around all the graves, reading the inscriptions on them. Of course, the longer the burial remains unattended, the more difficult it will be to find it.
5. If you need to find the grave of a famous person, turn to the Internet. Nowadays, many sites on similar topics have been created on the World Wide Web, where you can find a burial place, like ordinary person, and popular.

Somehow, historically, advertising of services related to human burial is hidden from the consumer as much as possible. And this is despite the fact that death is an integral part of life, and sooner or later every family faces such a problem as organizing a funeral. One of the most pressing issues, which today confronts the relatives of the deceased - what and how to choose a cemetery.

It just seems that choosing a cemetery is very simple. In fact, solving such a problem is quite difficult, because you need to take into account many different nuances.

When choosing a cemetery, first of all, you need to understand whether you will bury a person autonomously or bury him next to an existing grave. In addition, it is very important to determine the burial option - will this be a standard procedure, or will you get by with cremation. So, in the second case, any cemetery will not suit you, but you will need a special one with a columbarium.

If you are going to bury a person at an existing grave, it is worth considering that it will cost more. In addition, it is not certain that there is enough space left on the family plot to excavate another grave.

In addition, when choosing a cemetery, you need to consider its location. So, for example, if you have older relatives who will be visiting this grave, this should not be a difficult quest for them. Be sure to remember about the grandmother with sore legs, for whom it will be easier to get to the nearest cemetery and grave closer to the road.

It is also worth understanding how favorable the nature around is. If the cemetery is constantly washed away by rains, and landslides are common there, it is better to abandon such a place.

It is also worth remembering that the older the cemetery, the more famous it is, which means there may either be no places there at all, or they will be very, very expensive. In this case, you will have to give preference to more budget-friendly analogues.

Again, the older the cemetery, the better its infrastructure. This means that flowers can be bought immediately in front of the entrance to the graveyard; cleaning of the areas and landscaping work are carried out many times better than in newly developing cemeteries.

What to consider

When you choose a cemetery that suits you in all respects and select a burial place that meets all your needs, you will need to enter into an agreement with the cemetery management company.

In fact, as they claim, the land in the cemetery is free. In fact, this is not so. And you will have to pay supposedly for the burial, but this amount will include everything - the cost of the plot, and the work on the burial and subsequent improvement of the territory.

The cost of a plot in a particular cemetery depends on its location, popularity and many other parameters. The status of the city also matters. For example, in Moscow a cemetery plot will cost many times more than in Khabarovsk.

Often grief-stricken relatives have neither the strength nor the time to deal with these issues. Therefore, they prefer to order funeral services in a complex from intermediary companies.

However, if you decide to tackle this issue yourself, be prepared that you will have to spend a lot of effort.

To find a grave loved one you can use it at the cemetery electronic services:

• full-text search of burials. The search can be carried out by any combination of last name, first name, patronymic, dates of life and name of the cemetery. For each burial there is a photo and the exact coordinates of the grave in the cemetery. You can get directions to the burial using your smartphone.
• Skorbim.com is one of the oldest services in RuNet with a large database of burial sites.
• Pomnim.pro search for graves and provide grave improvement services. There are many graves from Jewish cemeteries.
• OBD Memorial database of those killed in the Great Patriotic War.
• On the page of the Union of Funeral Organizations and Crematoriums you can also find regional databases of burials.

If the burial is not included in the database, then the task of finding it becomes extremely difficult and turns into a real investigation.

• If you know the cemetery where your loved one is buried, you should contact the municipality on whose territory the cemetery is located. IN municipal formation Burial books for each cemetery must be kept.
• If the municipality did not help you, then the search becomes more complicated and you can start by studying the information on the website
All-Russian Family Tree on the forum of which users share the secrets of finding their ancestors.
• They can help you find the burial places of famous people.

How to find out where a person is buried, if only his personal data is known? What organization can I contact to obtain this type of information and are there public databases? We’ll talk about how to find out where a person is buried and what needs to be done in this article.

How to find a grave in a cemetery

Not knowing where the grave of your deceased loved one is is a problem that can be resolved quite simply. Each cemetery has registration books containing information about all those buried in a given territory, about the years of their life and the places that were allocated for graves. Cemetery staff will help you find your way around.

Or you can use other options.

Where to start searching for the deceased

To find out where the desired burial is located, you can contact the registry office. Here you need to go to the death registration department. To obtain the necessary information from the specified department, you will need to present a death certificate and confirm that you are related to the deceased, or justify the reason why you need to obtain this type of information. The registry office employee can provide information not only about where the person died and in which cemetery he was buried, but also about the last place of residence of the deceased.

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Based on the data received, you will need to drive up to the specified cemetery and there you will receive information about the specific burial place (it is stored by the cemetery administration).

What to do if there is no death certificate

But how can you find out where a person is buried if there is no death certificate? Then the situation becomes somewhat more complicated, but not everything is so fatal.

The minimum information you need to have to do this is the deceased's full name, year of birth, date of death (or at least the narrowest possible time period in which this event occurred) and last place of residence. Information about the place of residence of the deceased allows us to guess in which city he is buried. Next, you need to find out how many cemeteries there are in the territory of a given locality, and then there is a long and painstaking job of searching for data about a specific person in the archives of these cemeteries. You can search not only by a specific date of death, but also in general by all burials performed in a known period of time.

If we talk about a simpler and more accessible method, you can simply ask relatives or close people who were at the funeral. Even if a person was not directly present at the ceremony, it is quite possible that he at least knows in which cemetery the burial took place - and this will significantly narrow the search area.

As an alternative, you can resort to the services of specialists engaged in private investigation activities. Of course, this option is not the cheapest, but the result can be obtained quite quickly and without putting any effort into it. Search agencies usually complete the task in 1-2 weeks, and full payment for services is made only after receiving the desired result.

You can also try to find the data you need on the Internet. Now the network has a huge number of databases containing information about the location of burials. However, these databases are unofficial, so no one is responsible for the accuracy of the information contained in them. But the information there is free, and you have nothing to lose except a minor time investment, so why not try?

Nothing in our life can be predicted in advance. And situations often arise when it is necessary to find the burial place of a loved one who was buried in your absence. This is sometimes not very easy, especially in cases where there is simply no one to ask where it is.

Where should you go in such a situation? How is a grave located in a cemetery if only the name of the deceased is known? You will find answers to these and many other questions in our article.

How to find out where a person is buried through the registry office

One of the ways to search for burial places is to contact such government agency, like a registry office. After all, registration of death is an official matter, which means it must be recorded and registered. You can find out where exactly the document certifying the fact of a person’s departure to another world was drawn up using the official document issued on this occasion. It must indicate the location of this institution.

To obtain the necessary data, you should contact the registry office with a written request, which will be transferred to the archive available at each institution of this kind. It should indicate the maximum possible amount of information that was obtained. After all, it is on the basis of it that the search will be carried out.

The archives, as a rule, contain documents with information about where exactly permission to conduct the burial was issued. More difficulties arise if the funeral took place outside the country in which the person trying to find the burial lives. Even sending a request to another state does not always give the desired results, which is explained by different legal regulations in different countries.

How to find a burial in a cemetery

So, information about where the deceased was buried has been received. How can we now find the location of his grave? You can do this in several ways:

• You should carefully study the death certificate, because often the coordinates of the grave are written on its reverse side.
• You can contact the cemetery administration, which keeps records of all graves. That is, they record exactly who, when and where was buried.
• The search for the grave of someone who participated in the Second World War and who died on it can be done using the services of special websites that specialize in these issues. Access to the database on such resources is open to everyone.
• Every city has organizations such as central archives. All you have to do is write a request there.
• It is not uncommon for other dead people to be buried in a grave that has been abandoned for a long time. This is not a violation of the law if at least ten years have passed since the last burial. In this case, searching for burials becomes almost hopeless. Although it is still possible to make an attempt to find traces in the burial registration books.

How to find out in which cemetery a person is buried becomes much more difficult if there is no information not only about the place where the grave is located, but also no information about the date of death and even the surname of the deceased is unknown.

How to find a burial place if there is no death certificate

Where and who to contact if not only are there no documents, but there is no data at all except the name. You can try the following:

1. In this situation, it is advisable to know at least the place of residence of the deceased. Then all that remains is to find out how many cemeteries there are in this city, go to each one and talk with their employees.
2. Don’t be shy - ask for help from the neighbors who lived next to the deceased. Most often they know at least something. This is not always a rewarding task, but if you really need information, you will have to make some sacrifices.
3. If searching for a burial by name is a very important matter for you, then you can resort to the help of a private search agency. This is their bread, and they know where, who and how to ask in order to get the necessary information. Of course, you will have to pay quite a lot for their services, but they are certainly worth it, since it will take no more than one or two weeks to get the finished result.
4. You can use the services of the World Wide Web. In its vastness you can find, if you make some effort, more than one database of burial places. But here you need to understand that the information provided by these sites does not have official status, and therefore the reliability may not be very reliable.

How to find a person's grave by last name

The grave of a deceased person is certainly respected by all his relatives and friends. They come there to relive the memories of pleasant moments and unforgettable experiences associated with a loved one lying there. But sometimes life does things like this unexpected turn that sometimes the closest people cannot participate in the burial procedure.

And it turns out that they need to find a grave in order to pay tribute, but they know nothing except the last name, first name and patronymic of the person who gave his soul to God. If such information is available, the location of the final resting place can be found using one of the following options:

• If the funeral ceremony took place in the church, then it is possible that some information was preserved there. Clergymen sometimes also practice keeping a registration book.
• When a search is underway for military personnel killed in the Second World War, information about them, in addition to websites containing databases, can be found in military reports, as well as in the local branch of the veterans committee.
• Contact the central service of the State Unitary Enterprise “Ritual”. This organization must maintain centralized official records. But they will agree to consider your request only if you show them a death certificate. Without this document it will be impossible to obtain information from their archive.

Even with information about the surname, this task is very difficult and sometimes impossible to solve. After all, time is merciless and information about large quantities It will no longer be possible to restore people, even with a great desire.

How to find out the burial place of famous people

Sometimes people just want to pay tribute to the memory of a famous person: a writer, an actor, an astronaut and who knows who else. Each person is free to choose an object for admiration and imitation. It is well known that for the burial of such people, as a rule, special cemeteries are chosen, through which one can walk like through a museum.

We will name just a few of them:

• At Père Lachaise or the Eastern Cemetery in France, such people found their last refuge famous people, How:
• Edith Piaf - actress.
• Frederic Chopin is a Polish composer.
• Annie Girardot is an actress.
• Honore de Balzac - writer.
• Oscar Wilde - writer.
• List all famous people, reposed in Moscow Vagankovsky cemetery it’s simply unrealistic, here are just a few of them: Sergei Yesenin, Vladimir Vysotsky, Leonid Filatov, Bulat Okudzhava, Spartak Mishulin, Andrei Mironov, Vlad Listyev, Alexander Abdulov.
• The last refuge for the artist I.I. Shishkin, writer F.M. Dostoevsky, historian N.M. Karamzin became the Tikhvin cemetery, located on the territory of St. Petersburg.

I would like to believe that we have helped at least a little to those who have to decide very complex issue searching for a grave in a cemetery.

In Russia there is not yet a unified database on burials in cemeteries in Russia

Sooner or later in a person’s life there comes a time when he begins to become interested in the past of his family. As a rule, this interest leads to the search for burials.

Unfortunately, the current state of the Russian funeral services sector does not make it possible to quickly and easily find the grave of a deceased person. The problem is related to the lack of a unified database on burials in cemeteries in Russia.

Previously, information about the grave was stored exclusively in the archives of the cemetery where the burial took place, and a unified register of burials - common for the entire country - was not maintained. But paper documentation is not always reliable and is often lost.

Many archives were lost during the Great Patriotic War. The problem of data preservation was also related to the principles of organizing the archive of personal data of citizens in the Russian Federation and the USSR (for example, registry offices register the fact of death, but not funerals).

Now it has been decided to create a system for recording cemeteries and a unified database for recording burial data on the territory of the Russian Federation. A unified database of those responsible for the maintenance of the burial (grave) will also be created.

Find a grave - search methods:

Through the cemetery administration

If you know in which cemetery the grave of the deceased is located, contact the cemetery administration. It stores data about all the burials that took place: who was buried, when and in what area. If you know at least the approximate date of death of the deceased, you can quickly find the desired record.

Through the State Budgetary Institution “Ritual” (Moscow) or the regional municipal unitary enterprise “Ritual”

The cemeteries of Moscow and New Moscow are under the jurisdiction of the State Budgetary Institution “Ritual”; cemeteries in other regions are accountable to municipal ritual services. State Budgetary Institution “Ritual” and similar services have access to archives and registration books of cemeteries. Based on them, databases of burials are compiled. These databases are incomplete, but there is always a chance that with their help you will be able to find the information you need.

When contacting a funeral service, you may need a stamp death certificate. To find out the contacts and address of the municipal funeral service, you should contact the information service of the city administration, the MFC or the registry office.

Through the Ministry of Defense - if the deceased died (died) during the Second World War and was a military serviceman

Through the joint efforts of volunteers and the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, an open Memorial database was created, containing more than 20 million records of losses in the Great Patriotic War.

There is also a database “In Memory of the Heroes of the Great War of 1914-1918”. It provides information about more than 2 million participants in the First World War, including their burial places. These resources do not always indicate the exact location of the grave, but they can help determine the approximate location of the service member's death. The information obtained can help find the location of the mass grave where the remains of the deceased are buried. The Department of Defense also has detailed records of many military personnel, both those who died while serving and those who died after retiring. Relatives of the deceased can obtain this information privately by contacting the reception desk of the Ministry of Defense.

Find a relative who has a burial certificate

This document contains all the necessary information: in which cemetery the person was buried and where the grave plot is located.

Interview funeral participants

People can remember which cemetery the funeral took place in and where the grave is located. Ask your relatives for help, try to find close friends and acquaintances. If for one reason or another this is not possible, try to find the organization where he worked: one of his colleagues may have participated in the funeral himself or knew the participants. Finally, if the last place of residence of the deceased is known, try asking neighbors. Searching “through people” is often underestimated, but it often brings the desired result.

Through specialized sites for searching burials

One of the largest and most trusted resources is the Pomnim.pro website. It contains information about almost 2 million burials in 27 cities of the CIS, which often allows you to find a grave by the name of the deceased. If you were unable to find information using the existing database, the project also provides a service for searching burials on request. Some private investigation (detective) agencies are also engaged in searching for burials.

Search for a grave based on available information and documents

If none of the methods above helped, then you should try the following sequence of actions:

Determine the last place of residence of the deceased. Find out the city of residence - usually the funeral takes place in the same city where the person lived. It is advisable to find out the exact address.

Find the stamp's death certificate. If it is not there, then contact the registry office or MFC at the last place of residence of the deceased for a copy. To do this, you will need to provide your passport and a document confirming your relationship with the deceased (birth certificate or marriage certificate).

Set the date of death. This information is on the certificate. If you were unable to find or obtain a death certificate, then try to find the approximate date from personal correspondence, obituary and other records.

Contact the cemetery administration with available information. If the deceased died in a city with a large number of cemeteries, try to find out which cemeteries were buried in the year of his death (the city administration may have this information).

If you are unable to determine the burial place using the cemetery’s archival data, contact the church at the cemetery. Priests in cemetery churches usually register all funeral and burial ceremonies.

If the previous points did not produce results, then all that remains is to try to find a grave by name in the cemetery. To do this, you will need to do painstaking and time-consuming work, examining cemetery tombstones.

Example of a burial search

Finding the graves of heroes of the Great Patriotic War is a difficult task. Dmitry I. encountered it, deciding to find the place where his grandfather, a participant in the war, died and was buried. Dmitry didn’t know much about his grandfather, only his name, year, place of birth and the fact that he died somewhere in Latvia.

Turning to the resource obd-memorial.ru, Dmitry managed to find his grandfather’s last place of service, as well as information about where and when he died. The commander of the unit where Dmitry’s grandfather served drew up a map with a burial diagram - however, a search on Google Maps showed that now there is only a ravine and an open field in this place.

Together with his brother and wife, Dmitry went to Latvia, to a village near Riga, where their relative was buried. Unfortunately, the map turned out to be true - at the site Dmitry found only a ditch, and only pieces of reinforcement marked the mass grave that had once been located here. After contacting the locals, the family learned that there were graves from the war in the village cemetery. However, no matter how they looked, there was no tombstone with the grandfather’s name among the graves.

Fortunately for Dmitry, one farmer remembered that in the 60s the authorities reburied the remains of the victims in a memorial cemetery in a neighboring city. Having gone to the indicated place, the family discovered a well-kept necropolis, where more than 2,000 liberating soldiers lie in mass graves. The names of almost all of them are known and inscribed on tombstones.

At first the search did not bring any results. But once again looking at the long list of buried soldiers, it turned out that the grandfather lies right here - during the reburial, the surname was transliterated into Latvian and back, and an error crept into the inscription on the memorial.

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