Even more Fascist elephants

Do you still remember the German elephant, which in 1945 came to Moscow, to the Ugolok Durova as booty together with its caretaker, and which was recognized by the local street children as the last Fascist? Now, by courtesy of a Russian reader, two hundred and fifty new photos of it have been added to EtoRetro, the Russian social site for collecting old photos. These pictures show well, just like the story, how much the caretaker loved the animals entrusted to him, and how near he was to them. And, in this quantity, they also show how quickly common iconographic types are developed, even for such an unusual theme: an elephant with the curious crowd, a big elephant with a little child, and, of course, the archetype, the mahout on the animal’s neck, as was well known to everyone from the lithographic illustrations of the books on the marvels of the East.