Wojtek (bear)

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Wojtek with a Polish soldier

Wojtek (1941–1963; [vɔjtɛk] ) was a Syrian brown bear captured in Iran and adopted by artillery soldiers of the Second Polish Corps . At the Battle of Monte Cassino he helped supply the soldiers with new ammunition.

history

Wojtek on the vehicles of the Polish Army

In 1942, a local boy found the one-year-old bear, abandoned by his mother, near the western Iranian city of Hamadan . He sold it to the soldiers of the Polish army stationed in Iran for a few canned food. Later, the bear, which was very close to humans due to its early imprint, moved to the 22nd Transport Division of the Second Polish Army Corps. There he received the Slavic first name Wojtek, which is composed of the components of the name for war and joy and means "who enjoys war" or "smiling warrior". He was not kept in a species-appropriate manner, as he grew up without contact with other species and received beer, wine and cigarettes from the soldiers. Sergeant Piotr Prendys was responsible for the bear as guard.

Wojtek was very popular with the soldiers, was accepted as their mascot and later even officially as a soldier in the Second Polish Corps , with which he was deployed in Italy . Since the port authorities of Alexandria initially refused to allow the bear to cross the river when the troops were shipped to Naples on April 14, 1944, as animals and mascots were not tolerated on board, he was given a military rank with the approval of the Cairo High Command (" Private ") as well as a service number and a pay book, which legally legitimized him as an official member of the Polish army for the crossing. He was then granted permanent access to the British transport ship. Since then, the bear has been listed as Sergeant Wojtek.

During the battle for Monte Cassino he carried boxes with heavy mortar shells, which otherwise had to be carried by 4 men, across the battlefield on the rough terrain on the slope of Monte Cassino without dropping a single one. In addition, Wojtek managed in the course of his military career to provide an Arab spy, for which he was promoted to corporal. In addition to these military missions, he particularly ensured good morale within the Polish troops. After the Battle of Monte Cassino, with the approval of the Polish High Command, the emblem of the 22nd Company was changed to a bear carrying a large artillery shell.

Another Polish battalion, which had taken a bear named Michael into its ranks, brought him to Wojtek, assuming the two bears would become playmates. However, because jealousy caused fierce fighting between the two bears, Michael was handed over to the Tel Aviv Zoo in 1943 , which in return gave the Poles the monkey Kaska.

After the war

Shortly before the end of the Second World War , Wojtek was first taken to the Winfield Camp army camp in Hutton , Berwickshire , Scotland , together with 3,000 soldiers . After the demobilization of the Polish armed forces on November 15, 1947, Wojtek was given to the Edinburgh Zoo and subsequently enjoyed great popularity there as well. He spent the rest of his life at the zoo until he died in December 1963 at the age of 22. At the time of his death, he was 180 cm tall and weighed 220 kg.

Commemoration

In memory of Wojtek, a statue was made by David Harding in 1944 , which is in the Sikorski Museum in London , where a photo exhibition in honor of Wojtek was held in 2010. Plans to erect another statue by the sculptor Alan Herriot in the Scottish capital Edinburgh were announced in 2010 and their implementation was planned for 2011. This statue is to around 200,000 pounds sterling cost. Hillside Crescent and Calton Hill are among others under discussion for their installation site. According to Herriot, similar statues will be built in Warsaw and near the Monte Cassino Abbey . Likewise, at the end of the Wojtek Memorial Trust, a bronze statue is to be erected in downtown Edinburgh. In the port of Grimsby in England a wooden sculpture already reminds of Wojtek.

A reception was held in the Scottish Parliament in March 2009 in honor of the bear Wojtek. In November 2011, a procession of soldiers was held in Edinburgh, accompanied by bagpipers, to finally honor Wojtek with a Polish funeral oration.

The Beartown brewery from Cheshire , England , released a limited edition of 10,000 bottles of Wojtek beer in 2012 , which featured the ammunition-bearing bear on the bottle labels.

In the board game Scythe by Stonemaier Games, which is set in an alternative world in 1920 (created by the Polish artist Jakub Rozalski ), there is also a bear with the same name based on the bear Wojtek. In 2018, the Polish Institute for National Remembrance published an informative family board game called Miś Wojtek (Wojtek the Bear), in which the players re-enact the path of the bear and its unit from Buzuluk ( Soviet Union ) to Edinburgh .

literature

  • Wladyslaw Anders: An Army in Exile, the Story of the Second Polish Corps. Macmillan, London 1949
  • Stefan Kleczkowski: Poland's first 100,000: Story of the Rebirth of the Polish Army, Navy and Air Aorce After the September Campaign . Hutchinson, London and New York 1945
  • Geoffrey Morgan, Wiesław A Lasocki: Soldier Bear . Collins, London 1970, ISBN 0-7505-0961-9

Movies

  • 2011: Wojtek - The Bear That Went To War (Documentary, Director: Will Hood )

Web links

Commons : Wojtek (Bear)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n The bear who fought against the Nazis: An animal as a war hero. In: orf.at . October 15, 2010, accessed February 17, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b c Honor sought for 'Soldier Bear'. In: BBC News . January 25, 2008, accessed February 17, 2020 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Private Wojtek, the 35-stone 'soldier bear' which drank, smoked and battled the Nazis, remembered with £ 200,000 statue. In: Mail Online . October 14, 2010, accessed February 17, 2020 .
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Danny Kringiel: Soldier Bear Wojtek: Warrior with puffy ears . In: Spiegel Online . June 29, 2012, accessed February 17, 2020 .
  5. ↑ a b Scythe (2016). In: BoardGameGeek . Retrieved February 17, 2020 . Miś Wojtek the Bear (2018). In: BoardGameGeek. Retrieved February 17, 2020 .