This hurts me more than you...believe me...
2 Cases...
1) My Dad's aunt was a Major in the WWII. She served with the one and only L. I. Brezhnev. (Quick digression - in the 1970s there was a shortage [deficit] of phone connections, meaning one had to be in a line and await their turn which obviously took a long time. So Berta simply wrote a letter to her war-time friend stating: "Lyonia, we did not shed blood during the war and earned all these medals to be behind progress..." so on and so fourth. Anyway, within a short time there was an !EXECUTIVE! directive sent down to the local leaders to attach a telephone line directly from the GORSOVET [City Hall] to Berta's apartment. Luckily she lived across the street from the city hall. This story was told to me by my Dad) Anyway, Berta kept her medals and orders in a secret hiding place inside a dining room table with a hollow inside. Apparently she only told my Dad about her secret hiding place, and when she died in the late-1980s my Dad (having no interest or seeing any collecting value) simply turned over to the rest of the family all her real WWII Medals and Orders with all documents... This hurts!!!!
2) When my family and I were immigrating to USA, we had to live in Italy for several months. As we were used to shopping at "farmer's markets" aka BAZARs we used to frequent the "Mercado" in Rome. One day we saw a Hero of Soviet Union + Order of Lenin with all the documents and GRAMOTAs offered by the veteran himself for 100,000 lire (+/- $70). Because of our "soviet" mentality, we looked down at this person because of our propaganda-driven sense of pride, questioning "how could he have stooped so low, as to sell his orders and medals?!" Though there were not an abundance of HSUs in my city (Lvov, Ukraine) we still could not even imagine paying for something like that... In retrospect... I still have not forgiven my Dad for letting go of that lot. This really hurts...
OK, now I am depressed
Thanks for reading...
Eric
2 Cases...
1) My Dad's aunt was a Major in the WWII. She served with the one and only L. I. Brezhnev. (Quick digression - in the 1970s there was a shortage [deficit] of phone connections, meaning one had to be in a line and await their turn which obviously took a long time. So Berta simply wrote a letter to her war-time friend stating: "Lyonia, we did not shed blood during the war and earned all these medals to be behind progress..." so on and so fourth. Anyway, within a short time there was an !EXECUTIVE! directive sent down to the local leaders to attach a telephone line directly from the GORSOVET [City Hall] to Berta's apartment. Luckily she lived across the street from the city hall. This story was told to me by my Dad) Anyway, Berta kept her medals and orders in a secret hiding place inside a dining room table with a hollow inside. Apparently she only told my Dad about her secret hiding place, and when she died in the late-1980s my Dad (having no interest or seeing any collecting value) simply turned over to the rest of the family all her real WWII Medals and Orders with all documents... This hurts!!!!
2) When my family and I were immigrating to USA, we had to live in Italy for several months. As we were used to shopping at "farmer's markets" aka BAZARs we used to frequent the "Mercado" in Rome. One day we saw a Hero of Soviet Union + Order of Lenin with all the documents and GRAMOTAs offered by the veteran himself for 100,000 lire (+/- $70). Because of our "soviet" mentality, we looked down at this person because of our propaganda-driven sense of pride, questioning "how could he have stooped so low, as to sell his orders and medals?!" Though there were not an abundance of HSUs in my city (Lvov, Ukraine) we still could not even imagine paying for something like that... In retrospect... I still have not forgiven my Dad for letting go of that lot. This really hurts...
OK, now I am depressed
Thanks for reading...
Eric
