Hi, I am German and have recently received documents from the German Amt for Wehrmachtsauskunft. They keep old WWII documents. After a year of waiting and showing that I'm related to the person, in my case my great-uncle Helmut, they finally sent me the documents. The documents prove, he was part of the Battery Heavy Artillery Division 607 and 1944 October 7th. Battery Army Artillery Brigade 959, Location: Romania and Slovakia. He survived and became a prisoner of war in Berlin on 28.4.1945. He served 4 years as a Prisoner of war in a camp called Katowice-Welnowiec and in camp Myslowitz - Poland, probably as a miner which saved his life in cold winters. I was a child, and the adults did not speak before me, but I know that they all lived in Breslau, today Wrozlaw, and joined the military in former Silesia. Helmut's Borther Günther served in the 1SS Tank division "Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler" and 12th SS Armored Division "Hitler Jugend" as Scharfuehrer in the Battle of the Bulk. His remains were never found. It is shocking to read about the cruelty of this time. I also found the graveyards of two other family members, my grad father Rudi as a pilot and flight instructor (husband of my Grand Mom) and my grand-moms brother Karl-Heinz on the Russian front. He left two photo books from which I could reconstruct his WWII times and death. This is possible after the reunification of Germany (I come from the former GDR and it was not possible to search for WWII soldiers -not good in post communistic Germany) and the opening of the east block countries. The organization Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e. V.
https://www.volksbund.de/home.html is digging up soldiers and berry them in a nice new memorial graveyard all over Europe with the help of donations. For online search for missing WWI & II members go here:
https://www.volksbund.de/graebersuche.html
I found an interesting book on the internet describing the battles of Dec. 1944
Days of Battle: Armoured Operations North of the River Danube, Hungary 1944-45
ISBN 978 1 907677 64 9
https://books.google.de/books?id=nNvZAw ... 59&f=false
Greetings from Germany
Andy