Any ideas as to how I can return an ekm?

[Daarom]

I think the biggest enemy is mother nature and father time. There are still millions of soldiers lying in the ground of the former eastern front. The official authorities simply don't have enough capabilities to find and secure this in time. yes there will be people who have the wrong attitude. Diggers. But most of the diggers in the former east do a very good job. And cooperate with the official agencies. This is what time does with a EKM(i have lots of them in this state)

[m2013d04]

yeah i dont want to personally return it lol, im in the US it's likely not feasible. I just want to see if they can find the family and prove to me it is the family, and if so ill send it to them.

[BlackCat1982]

Information on fallen personnel passed from the Deutsches Dienstelle to the Bundesrarchiv a while ago. To want to return a Ekm is a nice idea but it will raise more awkward questions than it will answer. Sadly as you will not be able to provide any accurate information where it was found it won't benefit any potential recovery (assuming there was one). Erkennungsmarke were lost/discarded for reasons other than becoming a casualty. You are welcome to return it but you may not get any respose. Good luck.

[TWS]

It is indeed terrible when an EKM is separated by a black digger from the soldier's remains. As the article related, the discovery of an EKM or an object like an inscribed wedding ring is/was the last chance for long-waiting family members to finally learn where their missing soldier was buried.

The official recovery missions document their finds and report the information before reburial in an official cemetery so that the knowledge can become known to relatives.

The only EKM's I have in my collection are complete examples from the Nachlässe of soldiers that survived the war.

[Daarom]

Many EKMs are or have been found at the large caputilation sites or the temporary POW camps. The Courland Pocket (Latvia) - Metal Detecting Relic Hunting - Page 52 - Friendly Metal Detecting Forums Place where the German army capitulated in May 1945.