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Robert Maxwell's war medals up for auction
John Vincent04.06.08
Media tycoon Robert Maxwell's war medals, including the Military Cross for bravery, are expected to fetch up to £8,000 at auction next month.
The 13 medals, including ones from his native Czechoslovakia as well as Poland, Bulgaria and Sweden, will be sold by a private source at Morton and Eden in Mayfair on 3 July.
Maxwell was born Jan Ludvik Hoch in 1923, one of nine children in a poor Jewish family. He arrived in Britain in 1940 and joined the Army, becoming a lieutenant and then captain after leading his platoon into Germany.
According to a citation in the London Gazette in 1945: "The attack was in danger of losing momentum but this officer, showing powers of leadership of the highest order ... kept up the advance. This officer then led two of his sections across bullet-swept ground with great dash and determination.
" Showing no regard for his own safety, he led his section in the difficult job of clearing the enemy out of the buildings, inflicting many casualties and causing the remainder to withdraw." After the war, Maxwell founded Pergamon Press and became a Labour MP before acquiring Mirror Group Newspapers in 1984. By 1991 his business interests were heavily in debt and in November that year he was lost at sea in mysterious circumstances while on a cruise off the Canaries. After his death it emerged he had taken cash from pension funds to keep his companies going.
