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Old 26th June 2019, 14:07
Dan History Dan History is offline
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Re: Oblt.Klaus Lohe 9/KG4 LOST 7.10.43

Quote:
Originally Posted by Larry deZeng View Post
Thanks, Dan!

How the Germans managed to come up with Jeserischtschi out of Jeziaryšča beats me, unless some letters got changed along the way somewhere, especially the "J", which the Germans almost always render as a "Y", and the final letter, "i" instead of "a". The Cyrillic "sh" into The German "sch" and "ch" into "tsch" are standard, of course.
You are very welcome, Larry!

During the war, the Germans were largely working from Russian-language maps, and they would often render the Cyrillic letter 'е' at the beginning of the word as 'Je' in German. Examples are Егорьевск - Jegorjewsk and Ейск - Jejsk or Jeisk. So far, fairly simple. The problem with Jeserischtschi and many other places in Belarus and Ukraine is that there are alternate Cyrillic spellings. The Russian one is Езерище, the Belarusian one is Езярышча. It appears that the Germans combined the two Cyrillic versions to get Езеришче. That would give Jeserischtsche, with the standard romanisations of "ш" as "sch" and "ч" as "tsch", as you described. As the following text describing the German defensive operations in 1943 shows, Jeserischtsche was the preferred Heer spelling of this locality:

Quote:
Zur Begründung wird ausgeführt: Im Herbst 1943 stand die deutsche 2. Panzer-Armee im Mittelabschnitt der Ostfront in schweren Abwehrkämpfen um Witebsk. Über Newel, das die sowjetischen Truppen bereits am 7. Oktober eingenommen hatten, war der Gegner im November weiter nach Südwesten bis etwa 20 Kilometer westlich von Gorodok vorgedrungen, seine Angriffe entlang der Rollbahn nach Süden konnten jedoch bei Lobok am Jeserischtsche-See, 30 km nördlich von Gorodok, bis Anfang Dezember aufgehalten werden. Hier verteidigte die 21. Infanterie-Division einen breiten Abschnitt, der sich vom Ordowo-See über Kaiki bis Olschaniki erstreckte. Dabei musste zeitweise eine Kampfgruppe zur Verstärkung der benachbarten 129. Infanterie-Division abgegeben werden.
The Germans struggled with the Russian letter 'щ', which the standard romanisation of which is 'shch'. Witness the case of the airfield at the railway station of Сещинская, close to the settlement of Сеща. This appears on maps as Sjeschtschinsk, Sseschinskaja or Sseschtscha, and Luftwaffe units called it Seschtschinskaja or Seschtschinskaya. In most of these cases, the letter 'щ' was romanised as if it was the letter combination 'шч', as in the case of Jeserischtsche. This is why the longer and unreadable consonant sequence 'schtsch' was substituted for the simpler 'shch'.

Regards,

Dan
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