Henryk Zacharewicz

Polish 2nd Corps

Henryk Zacharewicz was born on 19 November 1925 in Wilejka, Poland to Edward and Nadzieja. He was only spent 14 years in his hometown. When the Russians entered Poland in 1939, he, along with his parents and sisters were exiled to Siberia.

In the spring of 1942, he was released from the labour camp and went via the Caspian Sea to Persia (now Iran) where the Polish army was being formed. He joined the 22nd Transport Company, Artillery division, of the Polish 2nd Corps.

When Hitler turned on the Russians, many Polish men were released from the camps and offered a chance to fight for the Soviets or trek west through Iran to join a new Polish army being formed under British command.

It was while he was in Persia that his company came across a small boy who had an orphaned bear cub in a sack. The cub was traded for food, and the soldiers, fed the cub condensed milk, fruits, marmalade, honey and syrup, and often rewarded him with beer, which became his favourite drink. Henryk and Dymitr Szawlugo, were the two main caregivers of the Syrian brown bear. They named him Wojtek (pronounced Voytek) which roughly translates as 'smiling warrior '. He behaved like a regular soldier: he liked beer, and he liked cigarettes. If the men gave him an unlit cigarette, he would throw it away. If they gave him a lit one, he would take a puff and then swallow it whole.

Wojtek grew, learned to salute and wrestled with the men. He also enjoyed taking hot showers because he could manipulate the taps. When the men marched, Wojtek got up on his hind legs and walked beside them. In convoy, he would ride in the passenger seat of one of the trucks. When he got too big for that, the men would put him aboard a wrecker/recovery truck where he had more room.

He travelled with the unit from Iraq to Palestine and Egypt. As the army prepared to embark on a British transport ship bound for Italy, transporting him became a problem as animals were not allowed to accompany the army during fighting. They solved this issue by giving him his own pay book, rank, and serial number, and thus he became a soldier of the Polish 2nd Corp. In Italy he played an active role at Monte Cassino (17 Jan to 19 May 1944). During this period, the defensive line anchored at Monte Cassino was assaulted four times by Allied troops. For the last of these assaults, the Allies gathered 20 divisions for a major assault along a 32-kilometre front and drove the German defenders from their positions, with the Poles taking Cassino.

After the war, Wojtek ended up in Scotland where he lived on a farm for some time, before finding a home in the Edinburgh Zoo where he died in 1963 and a memorial to The Soldier Bear stands there today.

Henryk lived in for some years and graduated from Chelsea Polytechnic, with a B.Sc. He then embarked on a lifelong career as a Research Chemist.

In 1954, he emigrated to Toronto with his wife Patricia. He went to work as a chemist for CCL in Toronto and he and Patricia (who died in 2000) had a daughter named Sonia.

He moved to Hamilton in the mid-1960s and taught chemistry and did polymer research at McMaster University in the 1970s and early '80s.

Henryk Zacharewicz passed away in Dundas, Ontario, on 15 June 2011 in his 86th year. Henryk was buried alongside his parents in Wroclaw, Poland.

For more information about Wojtek, go to the following link:

https://www.kresyfamily.com/8a-wojtek-the-bear.html