Anders' Army

Anders' Army is notable for having been primarily composed of liberated POWs and for Wojtek, a bear who had honorary membership.

A Polish–Soviet military agreement was signed on 14 August 1941; it attempted to specify the political and operational conditions for the functioning of the Polish army on Soviet soil.

General Michał Tokarzewski began the task of forming the army in the Soviet village of Totskoye in Orenburg Oblast on 17 August.

Menachem Begin (the future leader of the anti-British resistance group Irgun, prime minister of Israel and Nobel Peace Prize winner) was among those who joined.

The Soviets did not want citizens of the Second Polish Republic who were not ethnic Poles (such as Jews, Belarusians, Lithuanians and Ukrainians) to be eligible for recruitment.

More military personnel and civilians were transferred later that summer, up to the end of August, by ship and by an overland route from Ashgabat, Turkmenistan to the railhead in Mashhad, Iran.

With the corps, troops from Anders' Army fought in the Italian Campaign, including the Battle of Monte Cassino.

[8][better source needed] In 2006, a memorial to Anders' Army was erected in the Catholic cemetery on Mount Zion in Jerusalem.