Stalingrad: excavations near the city., my finds

What you said is valid for all battlefields, ww1 or ww2. I agree. And if there are some around who have never seen such a battlefield years after, I suggest them to make a trip and pay respect.
Also, try to find out how many battlefiels in Romania were destroyed by heavy ploughing or forrest cutting, complete hills blown to pieces for mining purposes (and are still) with all the remainders or artefacts gone forever.

This post has been edited by ANDI on November 01, 2010 07:21 pm

Romanian soldiers under Stalingrad




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A few years ago I had the chance to speak to a man who worked as a bomb disposal expert for the Belgian Army whose job was to clear the remaining unexploded munitions from WW1 battlefields.
He described how he discovered human remains everywhere he worked, many times crushed, mangled and scattered by the effects of the battle.
According to him, every time human remains were discovered, no matter how small, they were carefully documented, all findings were photographed, mapped and tagged and then everything was given to a special committee who made sure that they were either returned to the relevant authorities of the countries that they belonged to or if they could not be identified they were interred with proper military honours. Sometimes, all they needed was a button to identify the soldier. Dog tags were treated as human remains - each dog tag was treated as if it was the "body of the soldier". A dog tag is not just a "piece of metal", it is not "rubbish" and it is not an "artifact". It is the mark of a man, a father/son/brother/cousin/a mother's tears, a lot of meaning squeezed in one token.
This is called "respect". "Respect" should not be explained. Normal human beings should have an innate understanding of it.

Look, this is not about what happens to soldiers on the battlefield or the reason why those soldiers were there in the first place. We keep hearing that "motherland honours its braves". Reading this thread, I see many so-called "sons of the motherland" treating their own ancestors as nothing more than "sources of artifacts" to be "mined" by unscrupulous people.

By the way, I know where lots of Soviet and German soldiers are buried. I can show it to you on Google Maps. I also know the location of a 1877 Russian-Turkish War graveyard where a lot of Russian soldiers are buried. I can show it to you on Google Maps. When I was in school, we often looked after the monument of the graveyard, planted flowers, planted grass and looked after it in general.
Would you like to go there to dig for a medal or a dog tag?

Let those soldiers lie in their final resting place!
Radu

Radu, please show me on Google Maps!!!


Would you like to go there to dig for a medal or a dog tag?
Why not...

This post has been edited by proDigger on November 02, 2010 11:34 am

Start here: http://www.once.ro/
Radu

Well, it seems that some of the guys around here are taking this matter too personal, far beyond the serious (and semanthic) limit.
I don't think is anyone here who is disrespecting the dead, no matter the side they fought.
Polemic is useless.

This post has been edited by ANDI on November 02, 2010 07:26 pm

The fact of the matter is that you can not change the thousands of people digging for war souvenirs everyday from France to Siberia. Too many countries, too few laws, too many cultures. Russians could care less about Romanian sentiment. They need the money. So how do you intend to stop them ? It's not going to happen. We may not like the source of the objects because we don't know if there was a body attached with the ID tag or the ID tag was found by itself. It is all speculation. Does that mean that every ID tag found in Russia was from grave robbery? Does that mean that every ID tag that comes up for sale was stripped from a body ? I don't think so. That does not mean that the activity of grave robbing does not exist. However, what ever the source of the ID tag, it is best to try and preserve the artifacts as historians and collectors. Now one can argue the point that being a collector only fuels the problem. OK, now I have stopped collecting as of today and I donate my collection to the museum. Guess what, the problem did not go away. It's still there and growing. So as a collector and historian, I say preserve the artifacts with respect. Collect for historical preservation and enjoyment and not for profit. Profiteers have no feelings about the objects they sell, only how much they can get for them. Perhaps someday, some of these items will make it back to a museum for all to enjoy and history will be preserved. At least there will be some kind of legacy left behind for future generations to enjoy. This is the best we can hope for.

The answer is in your sentence: "they need the money". If people stopped buying these artefacts with dubious background the diggers would not get the monetary benefit, so they would eventually stop doing it. It's just like trade with exotic animal parts, or alike. Money fuels their activity. This is the key for everyone who cares even a bit about such issues.

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on November 03, 2010 11:21 am

That may be so, but some Romanians still care a lot.
Those who care a lot have a valid point to make, just the same as (if not more than) those who could not care less.
Radu

That may be so, but some Romanians still care a lot.
Those who care a lot have a valid point to make, just the same as (if not more than) those who could not care less.
Radu

For everyone who cares or not, the fact of the matter is that the activity is not going away. Collectors are not going to band together. The reality is that there is no ethics and religion between collectors and dealers. I just came from a collectors show in which a well known Romanian dealer grab an item out of a collectors hand who was looking to buy this particular item and threaten the person with a fist fight over the item claiming he saw it first only to put it into his upcoming sales list. This is reality folks. You have no control over it or what is happening in Romania, Russia or elsewhere. So the moral question really becomes this : If you really cared about the Romanians who perished, do you not want to keep the history and legacy alive through preservation and research of such items or would you rather see these items for sale on the streets, at shows and flea markets.

At least I'm not obviously involved in this things, it's a difficult matter, as a person who is not a Romanian as part ot Romanian people I can, without denying to say, and like Radub said on November 2nd:

"A few years ago I had the chance to speak to a man who worked as a bomb disposal expert for the Belgian Army whose job was to clear the remaining unexploded munitions from WW1 battlefields.
He described how he discovered human remains everywhere he worked, many times crushed, mangled and scattered by the effects of the battle.
According to him, every time human remains were discovered, no matter how small, they were carefully documented, all findings were photographed, mapped and tagged and then everything was given to a special committee who made sure that they were either returned to the relevant authorities of the countries that they belonged to or if they could not be identified they were interred with proper military honours. Sometimes, all they needed was a button to identify the soldier. Dog tags were treated as human remains - each dog tag was treated as if it was the "body of the soldier". A dog tag is not just a "piece of metal", it is not "rubbish" and it is not an "artifact". It is the mark of a man, a father/son/brother/cousin/a mother's tears, a lot of meaning squeezed in one token.
This is called "respect". "Respect" should not be explained. Normal human beings should have an innate understanding of it.

Look, this is not about what happens to soldiers on the battlefield or the reason why those soldiers were there in the first place. We keep hearing that "motherland honours its braves". Reading this thread, I see many so-called "sons of the motherland" treating their own ancestors as nothing more than "sources of artifacts" to be "mined" by unscrupulous people.

By the way, I know where lots of Soviet and German soldiers are buried. I can show it to you on Google Maps. I also know the location of a 1877 Russian-Turkish War graveyard where a lot of Russian soldiers are buried. I can show it to you on Google Maps. When I was in school, we often looked after the monument of the graveyard, planted flowers, planted grass and looked after it in general.
Would you like to go there to dig for a medal or a dog tag?

Let those soldiers lie in their final resting place!"

that a dog tag, however to whom it belongs, and after excavation wherelse ever, and if you think about dog tags, might be the lessest thing a soldier would have might lost in nearly little cases...So, therefore, may be not nevertheless, any kind of dogtag found beyond the surface must have belonged to a killed individual person...but we could also argue about finding those dogtags without finding the rest/bones of the former remnant, is not that bad...

But as Regal Uniform Collecter also said:

"The fact of the matter is that you can not change the thousands of people digging for war souvenirs everyday from France to Siberia. Too many countries, too few laws, too many cultures. Russians could care less about Romanian sentiment. They need the money. So how do you intend to stop them ? It's not going to happen. We may not like the source of the objects because we don't know if there was a body attached with the ID tag or the ID tag was found by itself. It is all speculation. Does that mean that every ID tag found in Russia was from grave robbery? Does that mean that every ID tag that comes up for sale was stripped from a body ? I don't think so. That does not mean that the activity of grave robbing does not exist. However, what ever the source of the ID tag, it is best to try and preserve the artifacts as historians and collectors. Now one can argue the point that being a collector only fuels the problem. OK, now I have stopped collecting as of today and I donate my collection to the museum. Guess what, the problem did not go away. It's still there and growing. So as a collector and historian, I say preserve the artifacts with respect. Collect for historical preservation and enjoyment and not for profit. Profiteers have no feelings about the objects they sell, only how much they can get for them. Perhaps someday, some of these items will make it back to a museum for all to enjoy and history will be preserved. At least there will be some kind of legacy left behind for future generations to enjoy. This is the best we can hope for."

It is at least a very complicated story at all...

As I remember, here in Lower Austria they made many years ago, a new street and a canal, and then the found four bodies buried beside the street, first it was thought, that they are German, but after heavy investigations they knewe that those men were Russian...these men were buried on a near cemetary and the dogtags were sent to Russia...

Treasurers will not count, where ever they search, which country they will oame from, on morale...If there are so called (historian) collecters, whose mindfulness is nothing more than money and their grievousness is about collectivables...it will ever happened...and the unburried body of the hopeless, lost in a war without winners, will after taking away those dogtags, forgotten beyond the end of the times...

Sad enough to say, that taking away these last things of fallen soldiers without giving the place of the digout to official agencies...the next of kin are brought about every information at least!

I say thanks for the help to literate people. They showed me pictures, where I saw the mean things that I found.


hosting images

This post has been edited by proDigger on November 18, 2010 08:35 pm

mean things...
Ah well, at least you are honest.
Radu

mean things...
Ah well, at least you are honest.
Radu

Maybe I'm not properly expressed my thoughts ...
Important that good people understand my commitment to finding the truth ...


This post has been edited by proDigger on November 19, 2010 07:16 pm

Hello everyone! http://www.airwar.ru/history/aces/ace2ww/pilot/serben.html
Again I dug up a Romanian dog tag, a soldier was from 91 infantry Regiment. I also found a torn stripe sergeant.



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This post has been edited by proDigger on December 11, 2010 01:57 pm