Reviews for Alton's Post Cards and Trade Cards: A Collection of Post Cards and Trade Cards from the Alton, Illinois Area

The average rating for Alton's Post Cards and Trade Cards: A Collection of Post Cards and Trade Cards from the Alton, Illinois Area based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-11-15 00:00:00 Rick Bridges I'm not going to call this the greatest-written biography I ever read, but the subject is one of the most fascinating non-famous people I've ever encountered. Such were the events in his life that I would doubt his story, except he didn't call attention to himself -- the biographer approached HIM after reading a few lines about him in a local "facts about our local citizens" type human interest story. Although this book bills itself as a Holocaust story ("Hero of the Minsk Ghetto" and the Star of David on the cover) and there is a large part about Joseph's Holocaust experiences, there's also the war story, and the mountaineering story, and USSR oppression story, and the immigration to America story. By the age of 13, Joseph had: * Helped about 200 Jews, including his mother and baby brother, escape from the Minsk Ghetto * Fought bravely as a Belarusian partisan and was decorated * Traveled from Minsk to St. Petersburg to Moscow to Kiev etc., alone and without resources * Enrolled in a prestigious Russian Naval Academy on the strength of his Army record, concealing the fact that he had had no schooling and was completely illiterate In his mid-teens and on into adulthood, he: * Finally finished high school * Became an expert photo restorer * Became a top-qualified mountaineer and climbing instructor (something that was really important in the USSR at the time; they were requiring mountaineer training of all their young men) * Became the featherweight wrestling champion for the Belarusian SSR, and might have taken Moscow if he'd kept competing * Got a doctorate at the Institute of Physiology at the Academy of Science of Belarus * Taught and researched at the Minsk Polytechnic Institute (now called the Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics, I think) * Married and had two children He could, alas, go no further: awesome as he was, Joseph's Jewish background made for an unbreakable glass ceiling. By 1978, in fact, he was unemployed, broke and with no future for himself or his two sons, simply because of their Jewishness. Not to be undone, the now middle-aged man packed up his entire family -- wife, sons, sons' wives, the dog, and a grandchild born en route -- and started over again in the USA. Following that he: * Created a profitable home construction business * Ran a successful Louisville, Kentucky restaurant * Became an American citizen The man was truly a superhero. Joseph Gavi died in 2002, a few years after this biography was published. As I said, the writing itself isn't terrific, and the printing is bad -- the text keeps fading in and out, getting gray and then black again seemingly at random, which isn't the author's fault but which is kind of annoying. But the STORY is incredible. Not just for Holocaust buffs here.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-12-01 00:00:00 Julian Egelstaff Enjoyable memoir of an American soldier stationed in England during WWII. The focus is on his relationship with an English woman in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and their growing love for one another. His experience takes him throughout England and Wales as the two seek to meet together on their limited leaves and passes. Enlow meets Van's family in Wales and they become engaged at war's end. And then....the distance and time factors intervene and the two go their separate ways. As in all love stories they meet again after 50 years and ... we'll you will have to read the story. The book has special meaning for our family since one of the pictures includes three of the author's friends at the 392nd Bomb Group--one of them is my uncle, Wib Stanford, Jr. A great surprise indeed.