Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is “Wojtek”—a Syrian brown bear who fought the Nazis on behalf of a Polish battalion fighting with the British. Bought as a cub by soldiers at a train station in Iran, he was enlisted and had his own rank and serial number.
He was promoted to corporal.
He was promoted to corporal.
Wojtek served in campaigns across the Middle East and in the Italian campaign. He moved crates of ammunition. After the war, he spent the rest of his life at the Edinburg Zoo in Scotland, visited regularly by Polish soldiers, who lovingly fed him cigarettes. He died in 1963.
There are memorials to him all over Poland and Scotland.
Here is his Wikipedia entry: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wojtek_(b…
On behalf of Wojtek, I would like to dedicate this thread to everyone doing their part to fight authoritarianism—then and now—in Iran, Syria, Poland, Scotland, and everywhere else.
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