The bombing toll on domestic pets and farm animals is never spoken of, but it was a slaughter of

momentous proportion. Horses burned alive at various stud farms or were simply let loose (see

"Horses" on the East Prussia section of site), cattle were blown to pieces, sheep literally cooked in

the fields and thousands of pets were lost, lamed, blinded, orphaned and even eaten out of

desperation. For zoos it was hellish. Zoo animals were bombed or later slaughtered and plundered at

war's end. The few survivors starved or died of cold.



Famous animal trainer, Otto Sailer-Jackson ran the Dresden Zoo watched in horror as a wave of

bombing set the zoo ablaze:



"The elephants gave spine-chilling screams. Their house was still standing but an explosive bomb of

terrific force had landed behind it, lifted the dome of the house, turned it round, and put it back on

again... The baby cow elephant was lying in the moat on her back with her legs helplessly reaching

up toward the sky, suffering severe stomach injuries unable to move. The hippopotamuses were

drowned when debris pinned them to the bottom of their water basin. In the ape house, a gibbon

reached out to the trainer, only bloody stumps left of its arms. Nearly forty rhesus monkeys escaped

to the trees but were dead by the next day from drinking water polluted by the incendiary chemicals.

The next day, a U.S. aircraft pilot flew in low, firing at anything he could see was still alive... In this

way, our last giraffe met her death. Many stags and others animals which we had saved became

victims of this hero."



The Munich Hellabrunn was likewise attacked and nearly destroyed. Adji, the first African elephant

born here died in a 1943 American bombing along with several other animals. The Hamm zoo was

victim in 1944, and the Tiergarten Nürnberg lost almost all buildings and enclosures and many of its

animals died. The Zoologischen Garten Dusseldorf was bombed repeatedly and completely destroyed

November 2, 1944 with over 200 bomb craters to bear witness.



Some of the murdered animals were endangered, and had traditionally been studied, housed and bred

in these zoos. The Schomburgk's deer may once have occurred as far north as China and Laos, but

thrived with certainty in south-central Thailand. Now considered extinct, a handful of these deer had

been kept in captivity and in 1870, the Hamburg Zoological Garden was the first zoo to actually

breed these animals. None survived in captivity and the Hamburg zoo did not survive the war.



Many zoo animals were frantically moved to zoos authorities believed were in safer locations. The

zoo in Wuppertal, although only slightly damaged by bombing, had no choice but to order their

starving animals either shot or sent to other zoos, notably their emaciated lions.



The wonderful old zoo at Frankfurt, first planned in 1859, was another senseless casualty and was

destroyed in a single night on March 18, 1944. All buildings except the bear castle were bombed to

the cellar. High-explosive bombs smashed the seal pools, the aquarium and the office housing all of

the historic archives. In the burning carnivore house, the cats had to be shot, as did an elephant who

had been directly hit by an incendiary bomb. Only 20 larger exotic animals survived.



In turn, Wisents evacuated from Frankfurt were killed later when their new home at the Heidelberg

Zoo was needlessly bombed at the tail end of the war in March 1945.



Europe's bison and largest land mammal is the Wisent. The last wild bison in East Prussia was killed

by poachers in 1755. Some were alive in Poland until the First World War devastated Europe. The

last Polish bison reportedly died in 1921, and yet still there were stragglers elsewhere, and at an

International Conservation Congress in Paris in 1923, zoologists argued for the conservation of this

European bison. Zoologists Heinz and Lutz Heck led a tough fight for the survival of the species by

attempting to breed them in captivity in zoos.



Dr. Kurt Priemel of the Frankfurt zoo listened and the International Society for the Conservation of

the European Bison was founded. For the first time in zoo history it was realized that zoos can

preserve species by cooperation. There were soon 56 pure-blood animals held in zoos and of those,

22 breeding. They slowly but surely multiplied until World War II broke out and again decimated

their numbers, while at the same time, the last wild ones were poached for food. After the war, 98

pure bred bison reportedly remained worldwide.



Only now are they recovering from the ravages of war. Today, more than 1,800 bison survive in the

wild, spread across Poland, Belarus, Russia, Lithuania and Ukraine. Nearly 1,200 animals are kept in

breeding and show cages and zoos. Poland and Germany have led the rescue effort.





In 1939, the gorgeous Berlin Zoo kept over 4,000 mammals and over 1,400 species of birds. Their

famous elephant house was totally destroyed by a bombing on November 22, 1943. Before the first

bombs fell, however, a bull had escaped from his open pen and began pacing back and fourth

trumpeting his impending doom. He had to be shot. Not satisfied with one dead elephant, a few days

later, on November 26-27, the British struck again and Blockbuster bombs resulted in the escape of

several large and potentially dangerous animals: leopards, panthers, jaguars and apes.



They grew frantic. Monkeys found themselves trapped in burning treetops, stunned lions ambled

through parks, and large snakes slithered through the crowds of desperate people fleeing fires and

bombs. The animals had to be hunted and shot in the streets during and after the bombing raids in

the midst of this Armageddon.



Out of 3,715 animals representing 1,400 species living at the grand old Berlin Zoo, only 91 animals

remained alive by war's end.



Note: Bomb damage to zoological collections was astronomic as well. Part of Berlin's

Humboldt-Universität was the Museum für Naturkunde, the first national museum in the world, with

a massive collection of more than 25 million zoological, paleontological, and minerological specimens,

including the largest mounted dinosaur in the world and the best preserved specimen of the earliest

known bird. Established in 1810, its priceless collections contain objects from three major fields,

paleontology, mineralogy, and zoology. The priceless mineral collections represented 75% of the

minerals in the world and attracted researchers from around the world. The collections were horribly

damaged by the Allied bombing of Berlin and much of the rest was then lost to plunder.





The oldest public Zoo in the world is at the Tiergarten Schönbrunn in Vienna. Even before 1570,

there was a wild park in Vienna, and during the reign of Maria Theresia, the Menagerie Schönbrunn

was improved substantially, eventually opening to the public, to "decently dressed persons." In 1778,

the menagerie, castle and the park, opened initially on Sundays only. Under Emperor Franz II/I,

Schönbrunn received its first giraffe as a gift from the Viceroy of Egypt in 1828.



World War I food shortages had reduced the zoo population 85% to only 400 animals, but with hard

work, the zoo was brought back to life. Then, seven weeks before the end of World War II, 300

bombs hit the zoo and Castle Park, 200 of them in animal enclosures, murdering many animals,

included a beloved rhino bull who used to allowed his keeper to ride on his back. Consequent aerial

bombing attack destroyed most of the zoo. Of 3,500 animals only 1,500 lived.



The First World War had also been difficult in Germany as well, and the hunger blockades inflicted

by Britain brought most German zoos to the verge of bankruptcy. Most of the Hamburg Zoo's

monkeys, for example, starved to death by the war's end, as did most animals dependent on either

fresh fish or exotic fruits. Two chimpanzees survived the war, only to be lost to the influenza

epidemic at the end of the war. Several zoo animals were eaten by a starving civilian population.



The Tierpark Hagenbeck is a private zoo in Hamburg which began in 1863 by Carl Hagenbeck Sr., a

fish seller and amateur animal collector. The park itself was the first zoo to use open enclosures

surrounded by moats, rather than barred cages, to better approximate animals' natural environments.

During World War One, many of the keepers were drafted into the army and some of Hagenbeck's

animals were rented out for use as draught animals for hauling coal and wood on home deliveries. It

was not unusual to see elephants and trained bears yoked to heavy wagons as draft animals. The zoo

closed for two years after the war as Germany entered into a deep depression, then reopened and

improved, bring in visitors from around the world. Then came the bombing of Hamburg.





On July 24, 1943 allied air raids destroyed three quarters of the zoo in 90 minutes, killing 9 men and

450 animals. From "Animals Are My Life", by Lorenz Hagenbeck: "The worst part of it, however,

was the fire, which was now quite beyond control. When the first incendiaries came down on the

roof of the elephant house and this burst into flames, our resourceful chief keeper, Fritz Theisinger,

quickly loosed his fourteen elephants, which he had kept tethered by only one hind leg, and led them

outside. There they could try to avoid the incendiaries which were falling everywhere, and they took

refuge in the large pool. Next, aided by the Czech P.O.W.s, he made an attempt to save the house,

but at this point the P.O.W.s lost their nerve and ran away."

