I have an original photograph bought as part of a “bundle” from a militaria seller whose business model is to put together sets of documents, photographs and ephemera that appear to be vaguely related so as to try to obtain a better overall selling price.
Although not an item immediately related to my primary field of interest, the “Deutsches Afrikakorps”, the photograph looked interesting enough to be worthy of some research. It is of a wartime recent burial with a crude cross and a plaque with the name of the deceased being “Paul Jennen”. Written on the back of the photograph is “Am 23.6.41 Bui Wlodimir-Wolijinskiji (Sokal)”.
© John Tull 2024, Going Postal
“Wlodimir-Wolijinskiji” or more correctly “Volodymyr-Volynskyy” is a town in northwestern Ukraine situated about 20 km from the border with Poland and about 60 km north of the Ukrainian city of Sokal.
This town is now in the Volyn Oblast (Sokal is in the Lviv Oblast) and since 2021, its name has officially been reduced to simply Volodymyr or “Володимир” to deliberately upset the Russians.
Under Lithuanian rule in the 14th century and Polish rule from 1569, it was originally named “Volodymyr” after its founder, Vladimir the Great, and was then renamed “Volodymyr-Volynskyi” in 1795, when it became part of the Russian Empire, to differentiate it from Volodymyr on the Klyazma river in Russia.
The town of Volodymyr in Russia itself was subsequently renamed Volodymyr-on-Klyazma, “Владимир-на-Клязьме”, then Volodymyr-Zalessky, “Владимир-Залесский”, and is now back to simply Volodymyr. The Russians being upset is because of their claim that “there can only be one city called Vladimir”. Note that neither town has anything to do with either Volodymyr Zelensky or Vladimir Putin.
Between 1919 and 1939, Volodymyr-Volynskyi was annexed as part of Poland and called “Włodzimierz” despite this being disputed by both Soviet Russia and Ukraine. Its residents were predominately Polish with a Ukrainian minority, with the town then being occupied by the Soviet army on 19 September 1939 before being attacked by the German army on 23 June 1941, the date of the burial of Paul Jennen, and reverted to being called Volodymyr-Volynskyi.
The significant Jewish population from in and around Volodymyr-Volynskyi were then persecuted by the German SS with around 30,000 of them being killed, leaving no Jews remaining in the town by December 1941. After “liberation” by the Red Army in 1944 only around 140 Jews returned to the town but by the end of the 20th Century, the remaining Jewish population was down to 30 people.
So who was Paul Jennen?
Presuming him not to be a Russian, Pole or Ukrainian, my initial research was to look amongst the German war dead records. Researching the history of German soldiers is difficult, primarily due to the loss of records during the fall of Germany, whilst most family records (the equivalent of our Parish Records) were, and still are, kept locally rather than centrally. Some families however do have a good understanding of their family tree, because of the need to prove their descent during the National Socialist era, as I found out when the managing director of a company I worked for in Düsseldorf asked why I was so interested in genealogy.
My initial research was via the “Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge” (German Peoples War Graves’ Care Association) who are primarily responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of German war graves and have records accessible via the internet.
The “Volksbund” started as a private charity in 1919 and initially its responsibilities were for the war dead in cemeteries in Germany. During WW2, the charity’s scope was corrupted by the demands of National Socialism but in 1946, the Volksbund resumed its original aims, and its responsibilities were expanded in 1954 to include military cemeteries outside of Germany. Today it is still primarily funded as a charity with the German government and states providing only a third of its budget.
As well as maintaining cemeteries, they also actively search for the missing and run an exhumation and recovery service (“Umbettungsdienst”) to identify and return war dead for reburial in their managed military cemeteries.
Accessing the records of the Volksbund led me to identify Paul Jennen as being an “Unteroffizer”, born on the “27.01.1915” in “Kleve” (a town in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, near the Dutch border) with a “dead/missing date” recorded as “23.6.1941” and “death/missing place” of “Krystynopol” (which is now Chervonohrad in Ukraine). He is not recorded as having been transferred to a military cemetery managed by the Volksbund although they do show his grave as being in “Sokol – Ukraine”.
On the Ancestry family history website, which is now starting to include and index Volksbund records, I used this information to find an image of the actual record card for his death as held in the Volksbund archives.
This gave me the additional information that he had been a member of “Stab Kampf-Geschwader 55” of the Luftwaffe. This was confirmed by the presence of a “Feldpost” number, written in pencil on the card, of “L35764” which I separately confirmed as being for KG 55, a bomber unit.
Kampfgeschwader 55 “Greif” was formed on 1 May 1939 and first saw action in the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 before transferring to flying reconnaissance missions over France in the “Phony War”. They undertook actual bombing missions in May to June 1940 over first Belgium and then France. In July 1940, KG55 suffered heavy losses during the Battle of Britain but continued to mount operations against Britain through to June 1941 when they were transferred east to support Operation “Barbarossa” (the German invasion of Soviet Russia).
KG55 flew Heinkel He 111 and in Operation Barbarossa most of their actions were in support of Army Group South of the Wehrmacht including the large battles of encirclement at Kiev and Kharkov.
Based on his age, Paul Jennen could have been a veteran of all of KG55’s operations up to the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, in support of which his aircraft was presumably shot down by the Russians.
Further research has shown that today he is not in a grave in Volodymyr but is probably in a common burial in the graveyard of the “Descent of the Holy Spirit” Church in Potelych, in the Lviv Region of Western Ukraine, which is directly adjacent to the Polish Border.
The enigma being: who took the photograph (possibly a surviving crew member?), how did it end up back in Germany and why was it with some letters originally posted to Düsseldorf, that I bought as a bundle from a militaria seller who had previously obtained them all from a dealer in Munich? Perhaps I may find the answer during my research for the next Desert Mystery series: “Letters from Afrika”.
© John Tull 2024
