Looking for relatives who are missing as a result of the Second World War and the division of Germany

Online tracing request form pertaining to the Second World War

We will gladly deal with your tracing request. If we are to search successfully for missing persons and for documents on prisoners of war and civilian internees, we need detailed information on the person sought and, if applicable, on the circumstances of the loss of contact. Please fill out the form as accurately as possible. We will inform you of the results of our investigations in writing; if necessary, we will also contact you by telephone in the course of our investigations.

Online tracing request form pertaining to the Second World War

You can also submit your tracing request using our PDF form and send it by post or e-mail.

Please note the following information:

If you have your permanent residence not in Germany but abroad, please contact your local National Red Cross/Red Crescent Society first. They will check your tracing request with regard to jurisdiction and data protection guidelines before forwarding it to the GRC Tracing Service for initiating further investigations in Germany.

Perhaps you too are now between 60 and 90 years old, or older, and your own past or that of your family is on your mind?

Or were you born later and thus belong to the successor generations of families directly affected by the war?

Around 20 million people in Germany were either looking for someone or were being sought at the end of the Second World War. Many of them still suffer today from their wartime ordeals, regardless of whether they experienced them as adults or as children. The impact of these traumatic experiences often only becomes apparent in the later stages of life, so that many of those affected then contact the GRC Tracing Service.

People of the following generations are also increasingly concerned with the unresolved fates of their relatives. Many children who grew up without their fathers because they had been killed or went missing in the war are now interested as adults in the fate of their fathers and their own origins. Many legacies contain material documenting the fruitless search for missing relatives. Many families resume efforts to find missing relatives and inquire at the GGRC Tracing Service about the current status of investigations. After receiving a message in which the fate of their relative is clarified, further inquiries about the person’s last stages of life and place of death often follow. The wish of these people - even decades later - to obtain certainty about the fate of their missing relatives remains understandable. The GRC Tracing Service is intensively dedicated to this humanitarian task and, thanks to its extensive data records, can provide further information in many cases.

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