While wandering around the back streets (one of our favorite hobbies) behind Tyn Church in Prague, we stumbled upon a fascinating little store filled with huge amounts of interesting things, appropriately named Bric a Brac (Tynska 7, Praha 1), owned and operated by Milos Gavrilovic. As we looked around and chatted with him, we discovered that not only did he know his inventory, he loved it. In particular, he loved the history and the stories behind the physical artifacts, the provenance. When I mentioned that I am a history teacher, he showed me three volumes of the Nazi magazine, Boehmen und Mahren, about the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. Most interesting of these was the March, 1942, issue, showing Hitler and his statement that Prague was the most beautiful German city, and showing the new Reichsprotecter, Reinhard Heydrich, two months after the Wansee conference, three months before his death, and honoring his 38th birthday on 7 March. Of course, I bought them, and several other real bargains as well.
Even before we agreed to the sale, he offered us coffee and cake. Our discussions roamed far and wide, looking at the history of the Nazis, the Soviet era, and man's inhumanity to man as well as man's sometimes spontaneous goodness. I told him my story of dinner with an Armenian former Red Army major who I might have met across a battlefield instead of cognac, and he mentioned that he was Croatian. His reckless youth had left him with a bad liver that exempted him from military service in peacetime, but he fled to avoid the conflict with the Serbs. He then began to tell us of a story he had read on his Kindle in a book his wife had recommended to him. As the story progressed, my wife and I recognized it as the story of the Serbian-Croatian war from Beautiful Souls by Eyal Press. When I told him that I had already participated in a Skype conversation with the author, and was going to do so again next week, he was amazed at the smallness of our world and the interection of interests of like-minded people.
Now I am looking forward to letting the author know of the breadth of his impact.