May 14, 2020 Director of SIC “Rukhaniyat” as part of the planned events dedicated to May 31 – Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repression and Famine in the Republic of Kazakhstan Aupenova A.U. took part in the online seminar “Search for repressed relatives. Where to begin?” held by the Gulag Museum (RF).
Every year, the flow of appeals from descendants who are interested in the fate of their relatives who became victims of mass repressions increases. In 2018, the Gulag Museum opened a Documentation Center.
During the online meeting, Maria Lotsmanova, the Head of the Gulag Museum’s Documentation Center, spoke about the practice of searching for information about repressed relatives in the archives of Russia and the former Soviet Union, about the experience of interaction with authorities, civil registry departments and other structures that can help restore family history.
During this online seminar, a step-by-step algorithm for preliminary search of information about repressed relatives was obtained, and the basics of working with family memory were given. It explains how to make the right request to the archive or archives if necessary. All this allows further structuring the collected material, keeping it not only in the family archive, but also in the electronic database – “Open List” – the most complete database of victims of political repression in the USSR (1917-1991), built on the principle of “Wikipedia”.
We thank Maria Lotsmanova, head of the Documentation Center, who drew on her own experience in searching for information about her ancestors, for her detailed, detailed and practical recommendations, following which one can find information about wanted relatives who were subjected to repression.
The GULAG Museum’s Documentation Center is available at https://gmig.ru/visitors/document-center/
