Wojtek the Bear [paperback]
Read Wojtek the Bear [paperback] Online
Authors: Aileen; Orr
Wojtek the Bear
Polish War Hero
Aileen Orr
was born in Dumfries and raised in Lockerbie before going on to study at the London School of Economics. After a few years in
banking, she married and became Regional Director of the SCA. She stood for both the Westminster and Scottish Parliament and currently enjoys working with parliamentarians on a variety of issues
and all things Polish. She is currently chair of Dyslexia Scotland in the Scottish Borders.
Neal Ascherson
was born in Edinburgh and studied at Cambridge University. A journalist for many years, he has also published numerous books and
is well known as an authority on Polish and East European affairs.
Dedicated to Augustyn Karolewski of Hutton Village, who inspired the writing of this book. He is one of the many unrecognised Poles who fought for your
freedom and ours.
This ebook edition published in 2012 by
Birlinn Limited
West Newington House
Newington Road
Edinburgh
EH9 1QS
Copyright © Aileen Orr 2010 and 2012
Epilogue copyright © Neil Ascherson 2010
The moral right of Aileen Orr to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.
eBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-005-0
Print ISBN: 978-1-84341-057-7
Version 2.0
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
CONTENTS
3 Fate Takes a Hand in the Life of a Bear Cub
4 Runaway Wojtek Heads for Home
5 Monte Cassino: A Legend is Born
6 Rationing . . . and a Bear Who Needs 300 Apples a Day
8 Wojtek’s Passion for Country Dancing
10 Bears Galore Send a Message of Hope
Wojtek’s Journey
The Bear at the Bottom of My Garden
Outside it was one of those beautiful sunny days that make living in the Scottish Borders a privilege: a somnolent summer’s day with hardly a breath of wind to disturb
the ripening barley and wheat that stretched out in a great expanse of patchwork fields, heavy ears of cereal drooping off their stalks in the heat. Even the vivid yellow splashes of rape – a
relatively new crop on Scottish farms maintaining centuries of traditional agricultural practice – didn’t overpower the gentle beauty of the scene. Beyond the red-brick farmhouse, bees
bumbled around lush bushes and hedgerows collecting nectar. Sunwick Farm was, to all outward appearances, a vision of peace and tranquillity.
Indoors, the house and domestic office phones were ringing off the hook, and I was panicking like mad. Everyone wanted to talk to me about Wojtek (pronounced
Voy-check
), the Syrian brown
bear that used to live at the bottom of our garden, and learn more about the memorial I intended to raise to him, although at that juncture I hadn’t a clue how I was going to get the project
off the ground. It had all started out innocently enough. A couple of Scottish newspapers had run articles on my idea to create a memorial for the bear who was officially made a private in the
Polish army and who fought side by side with Polish troops during the Second World War before retiring to the
Scottish Borders. What I had not bargained for was the way the
story had been picked up by the international media. Wojtek had captured the world’s imagination – or, more accurately, the vast diaspora of Polish exiles around the globe. The BBC,
Good Morning Australia and news channels in New Zealand, Canada and the US had all reported that he liked a cigarette, a bottle of beer and a playful wrestle with his companions, and that a
farmer’s wife in Scotland wanted to commemorate his life by commissioning a statue of him.
I had always assumed that my fascination with Wojtek, which extended right through my childhood until the present day, was unique, and that apart from a few old soldiers who hadn’t yet
faded away I was exploring a minor, if somewhat unusual, historical cul-de-sac. I could not have been more wrong. Wojtek’s appeal is universal. The legend of Wojtek has been handed down the
generations by thousands of people. Deluged by e-mails and phone calls from those wanting to share their reminiscences of the bear with me, I began to suspect that, in his own ursine way, Wojtek
was as popular as Elvis. And when officials at the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh pulled me into the ministerial tower at Holyrood to inform me that a small function to celebrate Wojtek’s
life was being upgraded to a full-scale diplomatic reception with political dignitaries flying in from Poland, I was sure of it.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. From the moment Wojtek set foot on Scottish soil he was a star. Certainly, his arrival from overseas in 1946 produced a Scottish ticker-tape welcome. His
first glimpse of Scotland was Glasgow; thousands of Glaswegians lined the streets to cheer him and his Polish regiment as they marched through the city. In the
grey age of
postwar austerity, he must have been a considerable spectacle. His story was known to the populace and he was regarded as a war hero, so the welcome was genuine and heartfelt. The bear revelled in
it.
By that time, he was, of course, a seasoned military campaigner, having spent 26 months travelling through the Middle East with his comrades, followed by a 32-month stint in Italy where he saw
active service as the Allies fought their way towards the heart of Europe.
Wojtek arrived at what was then Winfield Camp for Displaced Persons on Sunwick Farm on 28 October 1946, and it wasn’t long before news of his presence swept round the community. The
villages of Hutton and Paxton close by ensured a steady stream of visitors and, despite rationing, food. For Wojtek, food was the most important part of his life. While he basked in the admiration
of his many visitors, most of all he loved to be fed.
Right from the start Wojtek won a place in Scotland’s heart. It’s also readily understandable why the Polish servicemen held him so dear. Far from home, the bear provided
entertainment and fun. He was the child they had left behind, the pet dog they had loved. The day-to-day challenges of feeding him and keeping him occupied also distracted them from the horrors of
war, a war that had inflicted unspeakable atrocities and hardships on Poland. At Winfield Camp Wojtek’s ambling presence, a free spirit, lifted the hearts of many men whose future appeared to
be non-existent. It banished, if only temporarily, some of the men’s anxieties about the future and gave them a glimpse of the joy of an uncomplicated existence.
In truth, the life of a displaced person in Scotland in the postwar years was always a mixture of homesickness and
fear. The Poles nursed unimaginable emotional pain
without ever revealing it to the Scots around them. They came from a country which in September 1939 had been caught between the devil and the deep blue sea – Poland was divided between
Russia and Germany in a secret pact between the two major powers. The cruelty of both invaders knew no bounds.
After subjugating Poland in a few brief weeks the Nazis went on to make it a killing field, establishing six extermination camps on Polish soil including Auschwitz and Treblinka. In these two
death camps alone the Germans murdered at least 2 million people, including Poles.
Meanwhile, East Poland felt the lash of cruel enslavement by Russia’s Red Army and their
apparatchiks
. In February 1940, Stalin’s ethnic cleansing began in earnest. Men, women
and children were rounded up and forced onto railway cattle trucks and transported into the secret and inconceivably terrifying depths of Stalin’s Russia. One in twelve of the deported Poles
were sent to gulags in Siberia. It is estimated a total of 1.5 million Poles from the Soviet zone were sent to Russian camps. Only a tenth of this number would emerge alive less than two years
later, including more than 100,000 fighting men; when Germany invaded Russia in 1941 the Poles’ repatriation was the price Stalin grudgingly had to pay to join the Allies.
At Winfield Camp, many of Wojtek’s companions from East Poland were among the number freed from Siberia in 1941. Having experienced Sovietisation at first hand, many Poles had no wish,
ever again, to place themselves at the mercy of Stalin’s regime.
In later years many Poles would focus their grief and rage on single atrocities which became an emotional
touchstone, a sort of hideous shorthand that encompassed all that
they had suffered and lost in terms of families, loved ones, homes and occupations. The Katyn Forest massacre is one such atrocity, which was based on a secret death list drawn up by Lavrentiy
Beria, Stalin’s security chief, and intended to rip out Poland’s intellectual heart. An estimated 22,000 Polish military officers, policemen, intellectuals and civilian POWs were
murdered. Only approximately 4,400 Katyn victims have ever been identified. In 1943 the Nazis exhumed the Polish dead and blamed the Soviets. In 1944, having retaken the Katyn area from the Nazis,
in a macabre exercise of grisly political oneupmanship, the Soviets again exhumed the Polish dead and blamed the Nazis for the massacre. Some eight other known death sites still have not been
excavated.
There is considerable controversy over how much the Allies knew about the Katyn massacre before 1991, when Soviet documents were found that proved Stalin had ordered the killings. In the war
years many Poles believed Allied governments colluded in keeping silent about the Soviet involvement because it would have upset other political considerations. These suspicions were never publicly
voiced, of course. Winfield Camp’s Polish servicemen were remarkably tight-lipped about such matters. ‘You have to remember that your country took us in and allowed us to stay. You were
our friends,’ I was told by one former Winfield Camp serviceman, now in his 80s.
A Scottish acquaintance told me that he and that same Winfield Camp serviceman had visited the Pole’s homeland in Silesia. As they walked through his native village, the serviceman pointed
to a cemetery on one side of the road. ‘That’s the German cemetery,’ he said. ‘That’s where
they executed many of the village’s young men,
including my brother.’ A few hundred yards further on the two reached another graveyard and he said: ‘That’s the Russian cemetery. That’s where the Russians shot my other
brother in their mass executions.’
I had known the Polish serviceman for more than 30 years and he had never once hinted at the annihilation of his family. When I challenged him about it he said simply: ‘These are things I
do not like to think about.’