Translation Help

[aviator]

Originally Posted by CtahhR

Would that be akin to a croft?

I guess, something like backyard.

[scook17]

I recently signed up with a visualization course at Harvard as part of my M.S.c program. I'd like to do a visualization which shows the German Russian war as I've always had a long interest in the USSR. I have around 1000 photos of various USSR officers. A sample set is enclosed. I'd like to place these photos onto a date and place on a map which shows the soviet/German positions at that time.

Thus I need some help, as my knowledge of the German/Russian conflict is not that detailed, i.e. month to month positions of the troops/ground captured/lost. Is there anywhere I can find such detailed information?

I'd also like to translate the information on the back of many of the photos I have. The problem is I don't speak Russian, so need someone or a number of people, who'd be prepared to translate the backs of the photos. The visualization will go online so everyone will be able to see it.

I will scan the 1000 or so photos I have, which will take me forever with my flatbed scanner. Anyone who has photos and would like to contribute them can also either email me scanned photos, or if they wish, donate photos to the collection by posting them to me.

Please PM me if you'd like to help, or respond to this posting if you'd like to suggest some sources or something that might be useful to cover. Many thanks.

Some Photos in the attachment.

[CtahhR]

There are more than enough folks here willing to help. Just post the reverses (and hopefully obverses) one at a time (so they are big enough to see) and they'll all be done.

Very rarely is writing so poor that no-one here can decipher it.

The language diversity and ability of the members of the forum is vastly greater than when it was founded 12 years ago.

[aviator]

Originally Posted by scook17

I recently signed up with a visualization course at Harvard as part of my M.S.c program. I'd like to do a visualization which shows the German Russian war as I've always had a long interest in the USSR. I have around 1000 photos of various USSR officers. A sample set is enclosed. I'd like to place these photos onto a date and place on a map which shows the soviet/German positions at that time.

Thus I need some help, as my knowledge of the German/Russian conflict is not that detailed, i.e. month to month positions of the troops/ground captured/lost. Is there anywhere I can find such detailed information?

I'd also like to translate the information on the back of many of the photos I have. The problem is I don't speak Russian, so need someone or a number of people, who'd be prepared to translate the backs of the photos. The visualization will go online so everyone will be able to see it.

I will scan the 1000 or so photos I have, which will take me forever with my flatbed scanner. Anyone who has photos and would like to contribute them can also either email me scanned photos, or if they wish, donate photos to the collection by posting them to me.

Please PM me if you'd like to help, or respond to this posting if you'd like to suggest some sources or something that might be useful to cover. Many thanks.

Some Photos in the attachment.

It would be interesting for me. I have some photos of Soviet officers of GPW period with their names. For example, see my post about soviet leutenant with a german name (Alfred Nychke) http://soviet-awards.com/forum/sovie...tml#post235746
And I have also got a unique typesctipt of my grandfather's memoirs that have not been issued anywhere before. I am interested to publish them in future.

[scook17]

It seems the photos I have seem the provide a name, rank, when the photo was taken and some stamp of the military office providing the photo. Sometimes there is other stuff which I can't read written on the back.

Although I can make out the medals because I've been collecting now for 15 or so years, I don't know how to work out the rank or what branch of the military they were in from the uniform.

What I wanted to do was show a map of Europe which allowed you to track interesting people over time. I have both the Hero's book and the three time order of Glory book. I have a few, but tiny number of researched groups. Thus I could show when someone was born, and thier movements over the USSR/German campaign, as the war progressed. I could scan some pages of these books, OCR into Russian and Google translate into English for a first shot at this, to give me a small selection of people to work with.

Probably some people have already done research on groups and would not mind sharing that, so they could see their person along with many others and how they moved around the map during the campaign.

The project has to be very visual so therefore I want to use photos, show histories of individuals etc to make the campaign more human.

I will upload some larger scans this evening. Thanks.

[aviator]

I can help you with ranks and uniforms. Did you recieve my answer with the translation of example photos?

Major Akulov Ivan Ivanovich
For Bravery Общедоступный электронный банк документов 'Подвиг народа'

Major Smirnov Valerian Nikolaevich
Red Star Общедоступный электронный банк документов 'Подвиг народа'
Red Star Общедоступный электронный банк документов 'Подвиг народа'
Patriotic War 2nd class (1985)

Lieutenant-colonel Morozov Vasiliy Ivanovich - it is hard to find in the base

Senior Lieutenant Constantinov Vasiliy Germanovich
Red Banner Общедоступный электронный банк документов 'Подвиг народа'
Patriotic war 2nd class Общедоступный электронный банк документов 'Подвиг народа'
Patriotic War 2nd class (1985)

Capitain Kalyaganov Gennadiy Stepanovich - he is not a veteran of GPW

All of them are from the air force.

[matteti]

Once you have determined the unit, then you just have to use monthly Orders of Battle (OOB) to to find which bigger unit the soldier's unit was part of.
Then it's easy to find approximate position and what battles/operations he was involved in.

[CtahhR]

There is a problem with that however. If the majority of the photographs are dating from c1947-1951 the service personnel may very well not be in the same unit they were in during the war. There was a considerable reshuffling of forces when the Soviets demobilised in the months after the war.

Many service records show (officers especially) being moved to completely different units (even in totally different SSRs) soon after the end of hostilities.

Someone in the 4th Rifle Division or 1st Mechanised Brigade in 1948 would most likely not be serving with them constantly from May 1941.

War time photographs are something else.

[aviator]

Yes, you're right. The correct information could be found in award sheets only. Or in russian military archives, but it is not easy.

[scook17]

Attached are the photos, and the backs of them, in a little higher resolution. I'm curious to know what information is obtainable from these. There are stamps on the back. Do they tell anything interesting?