The Andrew formerly known as Prince (was: Jeffrey Epstein thread)

[sw2borshch]

Salt mines are rather different from coal mines (at least in my experience)

I've never worked in either, nor any underground sugar caves, but I mean for that air of small town desolation.

[ad hoc]

Salt mines are rather different from coal mines (at least in my experience)

ad hoc, did the guards "accept" Romanian currency? Back in the day it would have been Deutsche Marks, Dollars or Kent cigarettes.

Oh yes, that was the expectation. It was cheap, but with the flow of cars across all day they will have made a sizeable supplement to their income

[hobbes]

There's the Germanic name Gisela (hard g),

My Mum had a friend called that. Everyone pronounced it like a cockney greeting a scouser.

[Incandenza]

I watched the doc and I heard everyone saying Ghee-len'. I was also pronouncing it the French way all these years.

I was thinking it was "Jizz-lane" until I heard someone say it.

[sw2borshch]

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7n0...SbCtDAVVDjR1xw

The Behind the Bastards podcast is interesting on Epstein, as it is on everything.

[elguapo4]

My only journey over the Hungarian / Romanian border was by train in 1992. On the way into Romania, we were woken up at 2 am by a large female border guard, who sat on the edge of our bunk demanding 10 dollars each for an entry Visa ( we later found out it was only 2 dollars at the airport). On the way back into Hungary, the border guards barely glanced at our passports but gave the Romanian man sharing the carriage with us a right hard time for about 10 minutes.

[Fussbudget]

Couldn't resist the tap-in...

Hey, not everyone on this board can be called Chris.

The fact that he chose "Maxwell" as his new, English, surname reminds me of Maxwell House coffee (which apparently is still going, though I never see it these days)

It makes think of Maxell C90 tapes because I keep forgetting about the missing W. Just looked up the origins of that name, which appear to be glorious nonsense ('the company's name is a contraction of "maximum capacity dry cell"', as any fule kno)

[ad hoc]

Sighetu Marmației, the town on the Romanian side of that border crossing is where Elie Wiesel was born.

[ursus arctos]

My crossing of the Hungarian-Romanian border in 1984 featured about a dozen people being marched off the train at gunpoint, including the African "businessman" who had been trying to interest the occupants of our carriage in the Austrian-sourced contraband in his duffel bag (Meinl coffee featured prominently).

The guard also extorted me for the visa, and gave me "change" in Lei notes that looked to have been laundered (literally) dozens of times. One could barely make out the denominations.

[ad hoc]

It's all a bit easier now. Romania isn't in Schengen so it;s not quite a breeze, but it;s pretty simple (though the train still stops for an hour while guards from both countries come round and check)

The Maxwell/Wiesel border in question is of course Romania/Ukraine

[sw2borshch]

How close are the two places, ad hoc? Do we assume that their paths likely crossed?

[sw2borshch]

I've had a look myself and they're basically two sides of a river, so it's the same place really. So it's possibly reasonable to assume they attended the same synagogue at times, or a junior school or celebration of some kind. Not that it really matters or has any relation to the topic at hand.

[ad hoc]

Well they're very close, separated only by a river. And the two are of similar age, Maxwell born in 23, Wiesel in 28. But the river will have been a border right up until the time of the Holocaust, so I sort of doubt they;d have met

[ursus arctos]

The Sighet dynasty of Hasidim is the parent of the larger and better known Satmar dynasty (which has tens of thousands of members in Brooklyn).

The two towns are very close, but I have no idea how porous that border was in the 30s.

[WOM]

Blimey I've crossed the border there.

Hah...I thought you meant that metaphorically [like 'we're through the looking-glass, people'], but then realized you meant you crossed the actual border there.

[sw2borshch]

I suppose it depends how important a border crossing it was, and as there's a fair sized town right on the border it was probably quite important. So probably not that porous for people who lived either side of it. Depending on how big that river is and perhaps how far to the next big town on the Soviet side.

[sw2borshch]

Musing along, it's possible that the Soviet times produced a bit of a Berlin Wall effect on what may have been a fairly mingled Yiddish speaking Jewish community across the towns.

[WOM]

My crossing of the Hungarian-Romanian border in 1984 featured about a dozen people being marched off the train at gunpoint..

When I crossed the France / Italy border by train, a guy got marched off at gunpoint with one guard carrying a long, elaborate sword / dagger thing that had been found in the guy's luggage. He was the only person bothered, so they knew who and what they were looking for.

[ad hoc]

This family were from that area too (on the Romanian side) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovitz_family

[WOM]

Nationality-wise, L's grandfather was born in Newfoundland before it joined Canada, and he'd refuse to call himself Canadian since 'the vote was rigged'. He maintained that position all his life, and it was pretty much confirmed to be true in later years. England wanted rid of the hassle.

[ursus arctos]

It's quite hilly and there is a national park on the Ukrainian side that includes a sanctuary for ursus arctos (yes, really)

I'm not sure how capable the pre-war Hungarian or Czechoslovak governments were of effectively sealing a border of that type.

[ursus arctos]

sw2boro, there would have been very few (if any) Jews left alive by the time it became Soviet

[ad hoc]

It's quite hilly and there is a national park on the Ukrainian side that includes a sanctuary for ursus arctos (yes, really)

I'm not sure how capable the pre-war Hungarian or Czechoslovak governments were of effectively sealing a border of that type.

It was in Romania by that time. Since Trianon. But the point stands. The river is a reasonably sized one, but probably crossable

[sw2borshch]

Ah, yeah, in the 30s it's Czechoslovakia, not the USSR. Then it's going to be pretty porous, isn't it - the border is only theretthere effectively tax trade (and extract bribes), no-one is going to care about people, that they likely recognise, going back and forth to markets, relatives' houses and the like.

That last link of ad hoc's is crackers.

[sw2borshch]

sw2boro, there would have been very few (if any) Jews left alive by the time it became Soviet

Apparently the Romanian town has a fairly significant Jewish population today, but yeah, I was getting my timeline slightly mixed up, as above.