Highly plausible an American GI brought it home from Europe and it sat in his house for 70+ years. He passed and the heirs disposing of the estate took it to the thrift store.
Why do the Germans get the statue? Shouldn’t it go back to Rome from which it was stolen?
“He passed and the heirs disposing of the estate took it to the thrift store.”
It’s a common story that the kids of WW2 veterans hated “dad’s war trophies” and had no idea of their value when they ‘got rid of’ them.
Over the course of the years I’ve attended a few estate sales in Sacramento and at absurdly low prices I’ve picked up:
1. A German Cross in Gold
2. A Victoria’s Cross
3. A signed collection of the Four Freedoms by Norman Rockwell (lithographs)
4. A old copy of Mein Kampf signed by the author
5. Twenty British sovereigns (cost me the princely sum of $10)
6. A Norden bombsight
7. A small collection of Kriegsmarine Lugers
8. A pair of gray Luftwaffe gloves (very small)
9. Assorted currency, coins, and stamps
10. A Lithuanian passport with a transit visa signed by Chiune Sugihara (I sent it to the Yad Vashem)
etc.
It stuns me sometimes the dripping contempt these kids have for their fathers and grandfathers. Which makes it easier for me to all but steal these things from them.
I wonder if they ever found the original Elvis or Dale Earnhardt Sr. on black velvet. Fine art there.