Looking for Info on Grandfather in SS, help identifying uniform.

[matthewsiemens]

Hi everyone!

My name is Matthew Siemens, I'm a Canadian, but my mother is a Transylvanian Saxon(ethnic German) from Romania. Recently during some family research I discovered that my Grandfather had be in the Waffen-SS during WW2. Now this is something that had never come up before and my mother hadn't even heard about this. Doing some more digging I managed to pull some pictures together of him in his uniform, and I was hoping the knowledgeable folks here at this forum might be able to give me a hand!! I appreciate it immensely... he died over 30 years ago and I never got the chance to meet him. I really want to find out more about where he was and what he was involved in during the war if at all possible.

Thank you so much!!

Here are his particulars.
Name: Friedrich Schell
Born: Waldhutten (Modern day Valchid) Romania January 29, 1921
That's really all we know about him before the war.

Here is a link to a picasa album picture of him in his uniform...
http://picasaweb.google.ca/MatthewSi...20629406491794

Thanks again!!

[Admiraal]

Well, looking at that picture i see that he has the rank of "Sturmmann".
Which is a rank between private first class and corporal.
He wears an M40 or M42 uniform with M40 hat.
And he has on his chest what looks like a wound badge (probably for his arm/hand injury).

Thats all i can see.
But with the info you already got, you can contact sources in Germany to track down in which unit he served.
But i cannot tell you what sources, others on this forum can.

[juoneen]

Looks like he was in the totenkopf...looks like a skull on his right tab.

[hucks216]

Here is the thread on this site for researching relatives in the German Wehrmacht & SS...

http://dev.wehrmacht-awards.com/foru...ad.php?t=64548

[Antonio Scapini]

The righ tab is not a TK but there are normal SS runes.
Enlarge the pics you can see them clearly.
I also see a cuff band but is impossible to read something from this image...
Ask information in the places wroten in the post upon, this is the only way.

[415]

You can also contact Mike from Westmoreland research. I've used him several time for research on relatives. He does a great job. Here's a link to his web site.

http://www.westmorelandresearch.org/services.htm

Regards,

Chris

[MJC]

Hi Matthew,

Thanks for sharing your family history. I have a quick question regarding the spelling of the surname. Within the thread you have the name spelled SHELL, but the photos are captioned with the name spelled SCHELL.
Do you know which is the more authoritative spelling?

Great assault boat image.

[matthewsiemens]

Hi Matthew,

Thanks for sharing your family history. I have a quick question regarding the spelling of the surname. Within the thread you have the name spelled SHELL, but the photos are captioned with the name spelled SCHELL.
Do you know which is the more authoritative spelling?

Great assault boat image.

Oh, sorry about that. That was a miss-spelling on my part, the correct spelling of his last name is Schell. (I fixed it in the original post.) Thanks for the info everyone, I'd noticed the armband as well but I haven't been able to find any other pictures of him in his uniform that show it from the side.

Thanks for the advice! I'm actually heading to Romania in a few days and I'll hopefully be able to do some research when I'm there.

Since I'm also planning on visiting Germany while I'm in Europe, is there any place in Germany where I can go personally to try and find some information?

Thanks again!!

Matthew Siemens