Maroszek

J

James K

Member In Memoriam
Has anyone here ever seen a Maroszek rifle? I had never heard of it, but one has made news lately. The rifle was developed in the 1930's in Poland and only a few were ever made before the Nazis invaded the country.

A Google search turned up a fair amount of information, but I confess I had never heard of it. It has been in the news because one of the handful of remaining examples had been owned by a Fredericksburg, VA, gun collector named Kristopher Gasior. He advertised it for sale on the Internet and Polish officials saw the ad. Since it was of allied origin, they claimed that, like those paintings the Germans stole, it should be returned to Poland, and asked the U.S. to assist them in reclaiming it. The U.S. government acted in its usual reasonable and diplomatic manner - they sent a SWAT team to raid the house, terrify the man's family and seize the gun.

Anyway, the issue has been settled, according to today's paper; Poland will pay Gasior $25,000 and put the gun in their national museum.

Apparently, Poland has no plans to have the administration send agents to seize the tens of thousands of Radom pistols brought back by Americans in WWII. Googling the name will turn up information on it.

Jim
 
M

Mike Irwin

Staff
I posted an article on this some months ago.

Glad to see that they came to an equitable agreement.

The difference between this gun and the Radom pistol is one of sheer numbers.
 
R

RJay

New member
A work of art brought back from the war ( and the were quite a bit ) is now called looting ( and perhaps rightly so ), but a fire arm is just a bring back. I remember the article and was surprised by our governments action. I confess to making a few E-Mails in response. I'm glad it was settled in such a manner. I didn't even know it existed until I first read the article and had to research it. :eek:
 
J

James K

Member In Memoriam
WWII "bringbacks" were limited to Axis weapons, though guns like Radoms and Tokarevs were ignored since the Germans used so many of them. But bringing back a U.S. weapon was considered theft of government property and the same went for alllied weapons. So a K.98k was OK, but an SMLE was prohibited.

I think this was probably a unique case, given the rarity of the gun, but someone raised the question as to what would happen if Merkel asked for the return of all those German guns and Obama agreed to round them up. :eek:

Jim
 
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