Any news?

[forest]

Originally Posted by Naz

What a smart old woman, jumping at every business opportunity. Call me if your eyesight gets any better, we will talk about marketing.

Me eyesight as got worse but then I never had any faith

I had a mate in the steel works ,an Irish bloke called Danny ,used to call him Danny boy, if we wanted owt off of him we would sing to him , stuff like . O DANNY BOY I NEED AN HAMMER FROM OUT THE TOOL BAG FAR AWAY. stuff like that he was a good singer as well sang in his Church choir, a devout Catholic never drank or smoked or messed about with women . He had terrible back trouble after a works accident and must have been in some pain with it as he wore a corset to aid his back ,he used to string it up in the shower block before we started work. He was big for the Catholic church and him and his missus were always doing stuff to aid the less fortunate like coffee mornings etc, and despite the obvious pain he was in I never saw him without a smile on his face. Anyway his local Church run a trip to Lourdes in France and Danny and his wife went on the trip . I asked him about it and he said it was very rewarding. about a month later I hapened to have reason to talk to him in the shower block so whilst we were talking he was stripping off getting ready for work. when he started to put his work shirt on I said Danny aren't you saddling up the Corset . He said no I don't need it anymore , I said how come . He said that since he went to lourdes he as never had any back pain..

I saw the guy a few months back , a mutual friend had died from the Steel works and I went to the funeral , As the congregation filed out some one came down the aisle in a wheel chair I only realised it was him by his smile as he had aged some. I spoke with him briefly and he said his back was fine the reason for the wheel chair was because his legs had gone, his lovely wife June had died as well but despite this he was still smiling.

The bloke has got faith . I reckon if we can come up with a way to bottle faith like he as got then we are on to a winner ,so if you have any ideas on the process let me know and you have a partner. all the best

[bm-21Lemko]

I'm sure he took what we would have saw as mishaps as challenges by the will of God.

I dont know maybe someone else has a better idea.

[Naz]

Originally Posted by forest

Me eyesight has got worse

Hmm.. Maybe we could target those beggars in India who blind themselves (or get blinded by their boss) to get more pity. They wouldn't have to use spoons anymore like they did in Slumdog Millionaire. They could just splash their face with the stuff on a daily basis.

[Albatross]

Hi Forest,

I just want to add my name to the list of people thanking you for sharing your experience in Ukraine with us. Your description of life the countryside reads very familiair. Also i think it's pretty commendable you made the effort to learn Ukrainian. I know a British bloke who's of Ukrainian descent. He went back many times to conduct business there, but never managed to speak more then 2 or 3 words. I like your approach a lot better and hope you will share more with us in the future.

With best regards

[tractor103]

Nice to meet you all here

I'm the fresh man here and don't family with here.

Kathy tell me that i can come here start any thread or reply anyone. So i come here and meet so many people.

Now i don't have any news, but maybe later

I think i will come here more often

[forest]

Originally Posted by Albatross

Hi Forest,

I just want to add my name to the list of people thanking you for sharing your experience in Ukraine with us. Your description of life the countryside reads very familiair. Also i think it's pretty commendable you made the effort to learn Ukrainian. I know a British bloke who's of Ukrainian descent. He went back many times to conduct business there, but never managed to speak more then 2 or 3 words. I like your approach a lot better and hope you will share more with us in the future.

With best regards

Thanks for that mate , I enjoy thinking back to my times in Ukraine but I feel I have railroaded V.G.s thread , fair play to V.G. he as let it ride and so thanks for that.

This just springs to mind after something I read last week about Cyprus . Things are easing up a little over there so Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots are going back to their original homes after the partitioning . on getting back they are finding that someone else is living in their house or have built places on their land and now there is legal controversy about ownership going off.

Anyway I have often wondered how I stood if I wanted to claim back my Old mans homestead in Brusnowy.

I have some idea after what happened one time in Ukraine. My aunties village is near a place called Smorzhiv (excuse transliteration) and I got chatting to a woman who's husbands family were from near there. He was Jewish and he had never had any contact with them since the war and he was curious to know what had happened . According to the woman her husband suspected the worse but just needed confirmation. I asked around my Aunties village and some bloke said he knew of this village who's name escapes at this moment and he would willingly drive me there if I wanted .

We got to this village and started asking questions about what was in the village at the time of the war , what had happened to the people who had lived there at that time. after about twenty minutes a group of men came and were quite annoyed asking why we wanted to know about these things . The bloke I was with was quite diplomatic and explained that someone wanted to know what had happened to their family that had worked and lived there before the war.

The blokes said ok they were just wary that we were going to cause trouble as they had had quite a few folks coming to the village saying that certain properties belonged to them and that folk wanted them back.
They fetched an old woman ,probably the oldest resident in the village and she told us ,that the village was predominantly a Jewish one but jew and gentile got on with each other very well . I said what happened to the Jewish folk who lived there .

She said that one night German lorries arrived and all the jewish families were loaded on to the backs of the lorries and taken away , Nobody ever saw them again. This village is a few miles away from Brody town .

One time I was riding my bike back to Auntys place and at the edge of Brody town I saw a cemetery ,so i cut through a field that bordered on to some forest and went to have a look , It was quite something, all old Granite stones with Hebrew lettering on them , some had been daubed with graffiti and it looked like someone had started to clean them up, I had a wander round and decided to make my way home to Aunties as it was begining to get dark.

As I went up the field for my bike I spotted some kind of cenotaph {not sure if thats the right word} right at the edge of the forest . I went over to have a look and it said . In Memory of the Jews of Brody murdered here by the Nazis. it was in three languages and as soon as I can I will post up the picture. I can only assume that the relatives of the womans husband met their death there.

I am a tough old boot but I have to admit on my long ride back to auntys cottage I cried most of the way.


I read somewhere that no other country as suffered like Ukraine as suffered , and I can well believe it but I also think Brody as had its fair share of that suffering , here is an eye witness account to what happened in Brody at the begining of the first world war.

At the start of the war Brody’s train station had gone up in flames. Now a ramshackle buffet had been set up in one of the ruins. When I entered, the place was packed with officers, who were standing at the buffet or around small tables, consuming borshch. I noticed that the soup bowls bore a Hebrew inscription that read “mazel tov”, congratulations. The china had been evidently stolen from a Jewish hotel…The road to Brody was flanked by burned and desolate cottages. In the distance we saw a broad field covered with ruins. Soon the devastated town emerged from the grey mist of an early winter morning. There were blackened chimneys and burned walls as far as we could see, visible beneath a dusting of downy snow. The town looked like the ancient, mossy remnants of Pomopeii. I noticed the schorched wall of a synagogue. Above the door, some Hebrew words had survived: “How awesome is this place” [from Genesis 28:17]. The verse was fitting for the ruins of the house of worship and for the entire spread of the shattered neighbourhood. Nestled among the wreckage I saw a small cottage almost embedded in the earth. It looked as if it had crouched down during the conflagration, hidden in the ground, and therefore survived. An old Jewish man was standing nearby, as poor and hunched as the cottage itself. When he saw me and my friend in our uniforms, he whipped off his cap and bowed deeply. I went over and asked in Yiddish, “How come your cottage escaped the fire?” The old man gaped at me, then shrugged and sighed. “Perhaps a miracle… Haven granted us a place to starve to death.” I gave him a rouble. He was so amazed he forgot to thank me. He stood motionless, gawking. We walked on among the burned ruins. I noticed something that I would see again and again: at every street corner, shiny metal signs in Russian had been nailed to the walls. The occupiers had given every street a fancy, new name: Pushkin Street, Gogol Street, Lermontov Steet, and even Turgenev Street, if I remember correctly. The irony of naming these horribly

all the best.