With all the discussion of Israeli captured SKSs lately...
A couple of months ago I saw an Iraqi marked (Jeem stamped) K98 in my LGS, but the bore was worn, and the bluing was gone, and the price was a bit high, and he wasn't budging...so I passed. But, that encounter spawned a yen (or is that dinar) for an Iraqi marked rifle, so when I saw this one pop up at one of the big auction houses I went after it. It's a 1945 dou (Brno, Bystrica), of which there were only about 30,000 made, since the Soviets were closing in rapidly from the east. It has a nicely aged Israeli marked sling. It is wearing a walnut stock from Mauser Oberndorf ca. 1943, based on the WaA 135, but with a laminate handguard. It's quite the mixmaster with mixed and force-matched SNs and a stamped Czech trigger guard unlike the "winter trigger guard". Apparently these were seen on the last Czech produced K98s (post-WWII) known as TGF-50s (Tschechische Gewehr Fabrik), hence it is not original to the rifle either.
So, as near as I can tell, the journey of this rifle was from Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia, (to Russia), to East Germany, to Iraq, to Israel, to the US. Including Russia is based on the assumption that the Soviets seized these in Czechoslovakia and transferred them to the DDR. If it was directly captured by the Israelis from Iraq, that would imply it was taken in the 1948 wars and it would have been altered further to have that 1950 era trigger guard installed. More likely that Syria was in between Iraq and Israeli possession...and perhaps even a Syria to Lebanese militia transfer before Israeli capture. It has the characteristic "Fed Ord Inc S.E.M. CA" import stamp for these Israeli captured former Iraqi property K98s. Perhaps someone knows when this importer existed and stamped rifles in that manner and would put a late date boundary on the conflicts during which it could have been captured.
MARKINGS: serial numbers, WaffenAmts, barrel maker's mark, import mark