ww1 and ww2 romanian war cemeteries

Of course you may post the pictures on a personal webpage,

Please also post any info on the individuals

whose name appear on the gravemarkers in my photographs.

Kevin in Deva.

Frenchie, please post more personal data about romanians on that adress were you already posted the info about romanians from french army.

I have a question: can you explain the translation of the names of those romanians, into french, as are they in thise documents? Some family names sound german and some french. I can explain german names, but not the french ones. Can you help solving the "mistery"?

21inf., the key is what Frenchie wrote: those were Rumanian citizens, not necessarily Rumanians. Not everybody born in Rumania is Rumanian, per se...
For example, I met once in Brasov a Henschel Hs 129 pilot called... Chefneux.

Gen. Dénes

Well Denes is right for some individuals.

Also from a quick view, you have Romanian names, Germans and also jewish names ...

Generally speaking, it was an use in the French administration to make the name of foreigner to sounds more ''French'' (that was the case of my grand father).

It's not only a question of nationalism, but sometimes foreign names can sounds strange, funny or sometimes vulgar when said in French.

Also it happens, that the person doesn't know to read, and the officer of the administration wrote what he heard (like in phonetic) - an sometimes the results can be far from the original names.

It can be also a simple mistake : You can see the record of ''Ceaus Alexandru'' from Bacau who became ''Ceaux Alexandre''

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/j0FJK...feat=directlink

And last, sometimes they purely translate the name (''Padurea'' can become ''Bois''/Forrest). Maybe that's the case for ''Boisguerin Mircea''

Anyway, you have for now 41 records ... enjoy ... and more to come

and this is the page, where I start to post pictures from graveyard

http://picasaweb.google.com/111388742841678276618

Very interesting, Frenchie, I see some were from Legion Etrangere.

138 records founds in the French army archives.

http://picasaweb.google.com/11138874284167...chArmy19141918#

I probably missed some individuals, but it gives you an idea about where these soldiers came from, where they fight, where and how they died.

Indeed Contras, you are right, more than 70% of these individuals joined the Foreign Legion.

In terms of causes of death we have the following :

K.I.A. : 51%
M.I.A. : 21% (usually it means, nothing remains from the body)
Death due to war wounds : 17% (to have an idea about the wounds, have a look at the record of Ciorne Avrain)
Illness : 7%
Accidents : 4% (most are plane accident)


Record of Ciorne Avrain :
http://picasaweb.google.com/11138874284167...chArmy19141918#


If I find another records, i'll let you know.

If some of you wants to download pictures and use it, please feel free.

Thank you, Frenchie, if you find other records about Romanians in Foreign Legion, please let me know.

Interesting info, Frenchie. Keep them coming, maybe there will emerge some real romanian soldiers. From the documents posted I identified (probably) only one romanian oficer, aviator, died at Salonika, Greece. The others are actually french soldiers, as they were in Foreign Legion. They were not romanian soldiers!

More, they were (most of them) not of romanian origins, but they were israelites. Some of them were naturalised in France, so the only common thing they had to Romania was their birth place.

Few of those listed were romanians by ethnicity and as long as they didnt fight in romanian uniform, they were not romanian soldiers, they were romanians only by birth (and probably by citisenship, if they keep it after joining the Legion).

The real romanian soldiers are considered only those who fought in romanian uniform (see the case of romanian transylvanian volunteers from Russia in ww1). As exception from this rule are transylvanian romanian volunteers from Italy and France, equiped in italian, respectively Foreign Legion uniforms, but with romanian regimental flags and recognised by italians and french as being romanian units.

This post has been edited by 21 inf on March 07, 2010 03:06 pm

Far away from me the idea to open a debate on ethnic issues ...

At a first view, we can see that from 60 to 70%, these individuals joined the French army at the early stage of the war in 1914 (you can see this information on the part called ''matricule xxxx au Corps''), and few cases are in 1915 and 1916.

Considering the average age of this kind of individuals (at least the one up to 20 to 38 years old), this is clear, they were not French citizen (or naturalized). If it would have been the case, they should have been registered at the army at 20 (''matricule xxxx au Corps'').

I just want to enlight, that the vast majority of these people, joined the fight in a period when Romania was still a neutral country and not at war (8/1916).
At least from a French point of view, I found amazing that people from Romania (no matter their ethnic origins), a country still at peace at that time, decided to joined the fight. And then, took part of the battles in the Marne and Somme (bloodiest place of WW1).

The other question (for the few of them who survived the first two years of the war), is why they dont joined the Romanian army. Once you have signed (Legion or other regiments), you have no choice : stay where you are or received 12 bullets. Beside, in terms of logistic it would have a nightmare to try to send few individuals to Romania in 1916 (through Russia?).

Regarding the Romanian legion fighting in France, this regiment was officially created only on October 22th 1918 by a decret of President R. Poicare (even if troops were fighting since 1917 in a regiment of Romanian soldiers). They received officially the Romanian flag in 1919.

Far from me also to discuss ethnic origins of those guys, I wanted only to highlight that denomination of "romanian soldiers" is not quite proper for them.

About their reasons to join FL, I think is what they are nowadays: adventure spirit, maybe ilegalities made and trying to avoid law and police and so on. Who knows, maybe some thought they fight for Romania, but in FL...

Frenchie, do you have some pics with romanian soldiers from France from ww1, those in FL uniforms? Can you post them here, please, if you can find some?

military cemetery in Cincu
ww1, romanian soldiers. what is strage to me is that there are only romanian graves, yet the cross is erected by a german general. i think there are also austro-hungarian and german graves but during the comunism the stones have been removed.






gruss

Attached is the photograph of the grave of our cousin Solomon Avadic who was killed while serving in a Dorobanti regiment of the Romanian Army during WWI.

His headstone, which appears to be typical of the other gravestone in this military cemetery, is very unusual.

Does anyone in this forum recognize the cemetery in which he might be buried? Any leads would be greatly appreciated.

The burial record is in Romanian, and reads:

Solomon Avadic, died November 16, 1916

It also provides the grave location but as yet we do not know the location of the cemetery.

http://picasaweb.google.com/10361249845913...150341246126178

This post has been edited by adambrown on May 12, 2010 01:52 am

Having the date of death and using the link with data of the battles from 1916 you can reduce the area of serch
I believe that he died in the battle for Bucharest and was burried somewhere in an old Bucharest cemetery.

http://enciclopediaromaniei.ro/wiki/1916

8 noiembrie/21 noiembrie: Oraşul Craiova este ocupat de trupele germane.
10 noiembrie/23 noiembrie: Dunărea este forţată la Zimnicea de armatele germano-bulgare.
11 noiembrie/24 noiembrie: Râul Olt este forţat la Stoieneşti de către armata germano-austro-ungară care începe astfel operaţiunile în Câmpia Munteniei.
12 noiembrie/25 noiembrie: Autorităţile române părăsesc Bucureştiul şi încep retragerea spre Iaşi.
15 noiembrie/28 noiembrie: Eroica şarjă a Regimentului 2 Roşiori de la Prunaru-Vlaşca, soldată cu pierderi grele pentru ostaşii români.
16 noiembrie/29 noiembrie-20 noiembrie/3 decembrie: Bătălia de pe Neajlov şi Argeş ("bătălia pentru Bucureşti"), cea mai mare operaţiune de pe frontul românesc din anul 1916. Armata română este înfrântă şi se retrage, lăsând Bucureştiul în mâna inamicului.

@ Cantacuzino

Your advice was superb.

I visited the website for the Romanian military graves restoration project and leafed through the photographs of the Bucharest cemeteries.

http://www.once.ro/ro/cimitire_romanesti_romania.php

On the web page of the "Filantropia" Jewish cemetery in Bucharest, I found photographs of what is very clearly his place of rest. Our cousins - his grandchildren - who have never known where he is buried, are very pleased indeed....

Thank you!

Adam