The GRC TRACING SERVICE...

supports people who have become separated from their family due to armed conflicts, natural disasters, escape, displacement or migration.
It helps to trace family members, to put them back in contact and to reunite families.


The Waiting Room: New film about the suffering of ambiguous loss

Due to armed conflicts, flight and displacement, countless people around the world disappear without a trace every year. Millions of families miss their loved ones and do not know what has happened to them. Hope and fear are their constant companions: will he ever come back, is she still alive? Is the missing family member in distress and in urgent need of help?

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) illustrates the emotional limbo associated with this uncertainty for the relatives of missing persons. Watch the new German version of the film The Waiting Room and witness the suffering that uncertainty about the whereabouts of a loved one can cause.


News

[Translate to English:] Vermisste des Zweiten Weltkrieges - Karteikarten

The German Red Cross (GRC) welcomes the fact that the financial resources for the task of “Clarifying the fate of missing persons from the Second World War” are still included in the Federal…

International Day of the Disappeared 2024

Many people around the world disappear without a trace – whether during armed conflicts in their home countries or when fleeing along migration routes. In Germany, too, thousands are suffering because…

Ukrainian population on the run

In view of the current situation in Ukraine, the GRC Tracing Service provides the following information on its services


Insights into our work

Family M. and GRC President Mrs Hasselfeldt

Finally reunited - after more than six years apart

Elham M. is 21 years old and knows exactly how long she was separated from her father – six years and two months. From 2014 to 2020, between the…

Family A. and GRC President Mrs Hasselfeldt

Over Christmas 2013, Yusif and Gule A. and their two small children arrive as refugees from Syria at a reception centre in Bielefeld. Three weeks earlier, they had fled their village in northern Syria…

After six years of separation, Mr Y.’s wife and daughter finally receive the longed-for family reunion visa and can enter Germany. The time of waiting was dominated by anxiety, sorrow and despair.…

Wolfgang Voss

In the winter of 1945 towards the end of the Second World War, Wolfgang Voss was injured in the trenches after being hit by shrapnel in his hip during combat with US soldiers in the Schnee Eifel…

Manfred Kropp

Certainty about the whereabouts of the war-missing father from Russian archives

Still image capture from video excerpt

Success of the GRC child tracing service


Tracing missing relatives

International Tracing with the GRC Tracing Service
© Caroline Haga / IFRK

Search for relatives who are missing due to armed conflict, disaster, flight, displacement or migration.

Ethnic German repatriates
© Gerhard Westrich

Search for relatives who are missing due to resettlement to Germany (in particular ethnic German repatriates from the former Soviet Union).

Second World War

Search for relatives who are missing in connection with the Second World War or the division of Germany.

Information and background knowledge

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