At the beginning of December 2004 we received an e-mail enquiry from Russia. Mr D. informed us that his grandfather had been wounded in a defensive battle of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy during the First World War in Lemberg (former Austro-Hungarian Crown Land of Galicia and Lodomeria). Subsequently he was abducted by the Russian Army and taken for forced labour in Siberia.

Before his death the deceased, who had become stateless, married a Russian woman who gave birth to their only son. The son suffered greatly from the implications of the Second World War as he was considered to be an ethnic German.

After the end of the war, the Austrian family tried numerous times to bring the son of the abducted soldier to Austria, but failed. He never saw his father’s homeland before dying.

His son, who lives in the Jewish autonomous region of Russia, asked us to search for his relatives in Austria.