At the beginning of December 2004, we received an email inquiry from Russia. Mr. D. wrote to us that his grandfather was wounded in a defensive battle of the k.u.k. Army in World War I near Lemberg (former Austro-Hungarian crown land Galicia & Lodomeria) and as a result was deported by the Russian Army to labor service in Siberia.
There he married a Russian before his death – stateless – who bore him a son. This one had to suffer greatly under the consequences of World War II, as he was considered a so-called ethnic German.
After the end of the war, the Austrian family tried several times in vain to bring the son of the deportee to Austria; until his death he did not see his father’s country.
His son, who lives in the Jewish Autonomous Region of Russia, commissioned us to search for his relatives living in Austria.
First of all, we researched the birth entries in the Lower Austrian place of birth of the grandfather of the client and we were able to determine that he had siblings, whose descendants we could not determine even after extremely intensive research in the region.
The Vienna City and State Archive then gave us insight and we found out there that parts of the family moved to Vienna after World War I and also died there. A check of the grave list at the Vienna Central Cemetery confirmed that some of his relatives had died in Vienna.
We then checked who paid for the grave of the brother of the deportee and were thus able to determine his daughter, whom we then contacted and who confirmed to us that a relative of the family from Russia never came back.
A family reunion after almost 90 years had succeeded.
