[News] Battle of Berlin survivor Saturn the alligator dies in Moscow Zoo

[#Sissa]

An alligator who survived World War Two in Berlin and was rumoured - wrongly - to have belonged to Nazi
leader Adolf Hitler has died in Moscow Zoo.

"Yesterday morning, our Mississippi alligator Saturn died of old age. He was about 84 years old -
an extremely respectable age," the zoo said.

Saturn was gifted to Berlin Zoo in 1936 soon after he was born in the US. He escaped
the zoo being bombed in 1943.

British soldiers found him three years later and gave him to the Soviet Union.

How he spent the intervening years always remained a mystery, but since July 1946 the alligato
r has been a hit with visitors in Moscow.

"Moscow Zoo has had the honour of keeping Saturn for 74 years," the zoo
said in a statement.

"For us Saturn was an entire era, and that's without the slightest exaggeration... He saw many of us
when we were children. We hope that we did not disappoint him."

Saturn may even have been the world's oldest alligator - it's impossible to say. Another male alligator, Muja who is
at Belgrade Zoo in Serbia, is also in his 80s and still alive.

But it's doubtful any alligator could compete with Saturn if it came to
selling their memoirs.

The most headline grabbing detail is the rumour that Saturn had belonged to
Hitler, which is untrue.

"Almost immediately after the arrival of the animal, the myth appeared that it was supposedly in Hitler's collectio
n, and not in the Berlin zoo," Interfax news agency reports. It is unclear how the rumour started

Saturn's death-defying escape in 1943 is unlikely ever to be explained.

Berlin, the capital of Nazi Germany, was subjected to intense Allied bombing before the war ended in 1945.


The so-called Battle of Berlin began in November 1943 and the night of 22-23 November saw extensive damage
to areas west of the centre, including the Tiergarten district where the city's zoo is located.

Thousands of people were killed or injured and many of the zoo's animals perished too.

The zoo's aquarium building took a direct hit. One report said passers-by had seen the corpses of four crocodiles
in the street outside, tossed there by the force of the blast.

Saturn somehow survived and then lived for three years in a city ravaged by
war, and a climate unsuited to alligators.