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This is our American stories, and now we bring you an obituary written by Alex Barrizzo about his grandfather, Dimitri.

Here's Alex with his grandfather's story.

Early on January 27th, 2018, the most interesting man in the world passed away at the age of 91.

No, I'm not speaking of Jonathan Goldsmith, the guy who just

pretended to be the most interesting man in the world. I'm speaking of the real deal. My grandfather,

Dmitri Berzo, a man who survived Stalin and Hitler, cheated death on multiple occasions, and went on to

live the American dream. His was an impossibly unique

story and one that seems too extraordinary to be true and yet is, capped with a cautionary tale

about modern health care. For many people, including my Ukrainian grandmother, life from the

Soviet Union was hell. To break the will of the

Ukrainian people, Joseph Stalin implemented a mass starvation program, now known as the Hall of the Moor,

which killed millions. But life in Russia was quite a bit different, at least if one avoided Stalin's

bad side. My grandfather was born in 1926 in Rostov-on-Don, a port city close to the Black Sea.

His mother was a waitress and rather popular with the boys, so my grandfather never knew his dad.

He also didn't particularly care for school, skipping the classroom for the local cinema. He got away with that

on most days, but one time, when his mother found him at home instead of at school, she hit him in the

head with a frying pan and nearly killed him. Maybe that's when he developed his sense of humor.

He was outside with his grandmother one day when his mother was late arriving home. He consoled her with a bit of fake news.

There had been a terrible streetcar accident and his mother was probably on it.

Upon hearing this, his grandmother passed out,

...