How to find a partisan record

Before you start

Write down what the family already knows: the person's full name and other spellings (Yiddish, Polish, Russian, Hebrew), the year and town of birth, the ghetto they were in, and the forest, brigade or unit if anyone remembers it. USHMM advises that knowing the person's town is especially helpful at the start of research.

Partisan lists were often written in Russian, so a name may appear in a Russian form or with a patronymic (the father's first name). Try several spellings in every database.

Where to search, step by step

1. 1. Ghetto Fighters' House Archive The archive at Kibbutz Lohamei Haghetaot holds letters, personal documents, diaries, written and recorded testimonies, films, photographs and art. It keeps a database open to the public and is digitising its holdings; many items are in its online archive. The archive can be contacted by phone or through its contact form. It is the right place to ask about material from the old partisans database, which was its project.
2. 2. Yad Vashem, Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names The names database went online in 2004. In 2014 it was expanded with people whose fate is not yet known, and in January 2021 it began to include names of Holocaust survivors. Families can also add Pages of Testimony and photos.
3. 3. Yad Vashem Archives Yad Vashem's Reference and Information Services help the public locate material. There is a reading room open without registration, off-site research services that can send archival material, and an online form to request information on a victim.
4. 4. JewishGen, Jewish Partisans in Belarus, 1941-1944 A list of 8,451 records compiled by Dr. Inna Gerasimova of the Museum of Jewish History and Culture of Belarus in Minsk. Each record gives the name, patronymic, year of birth, last residence, oblast, brigade and unit, and sometimes the date of death. It is searchable through JewishGen's Holocaust Database and its Belarus Database.
5. 5. Arolsen Archives online The Arolsen Archives hold records on victims of Nazi persecution, including camp records, forced labour files and documents from displaced persons camps. More than 40 million documents are searchable online by anyone.
6. 6. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum USHMM's Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database holds millions of personal records, about 80 percent of them online. On request, museum staff search the International Tracing Service digital archive and other collections for survivors and families of victims, free of charge.
7. 7. Memorial (Yizkor) books Yizkor (memorial) books were written by survivors and former residents to preserve the Jewish communities of Eastern and Central Europe, and the book of a family's town may mention people who fought. JewishGen's Yizkor Book Project translates these books and offers a necrology index and a master name index of the translated parts.

Which source fits which question

For background on the units and the forests, read Jewish partisans, The Bielski partisans and The Vilna ghetto and the FPO.

If you came from an old card link

Links to cards of the old database (for example from Wikipedia or forums) now lead here, because the cards are offline. The old database was a project of the Ghetto Fighters' House, and this site is independent and not linked to it. We have no copy of the cards and do not reproduce their texts or photos. More on its history is on the About page.