Josef Ruckhofer discovered the wallet of Eligios Ramos, whose battalion was stationed in Austria in 1945, while renovating his late grandfather’s farmhouse
A wallet lost 70 years ago by an American soldier in Austria during the second world war was returned to its rightful owner thanks to a doctor who discovered the item in his late grandfather’s farmhouse.
Josef Ruckhofer said on Thursday he had been renovating the house near the city of Salzburg when he stumbled across the leather wallet under a wooden plank in June.
Military identity papers revealed that the purse had belonged to Eligio Ramos, an American soldier from Texas whose battalion had been stationed in Austria in 1945.
The wallet also contained “family photos of a woman and child and old stamps, but no money”, Ruckhofer said.
“Given that we’ve been commemorating the 70th anniversary [of the second world war] this year, I thought it would be a nice idea to find the owner and maybe return his wallet, if he was still alive,” he added.
Read more:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/06/austria-lost-wallet-second-world-war-american-soldier
