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Veteran of famed WWII unit honored on 103rd birthday
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-12-18 15:23

World War II veteran Aleksander Szekal holds up a 1927 Polish army photograph of himself at his home in the village of Ivyanets, some 70 kilometers (44 miles) northwest of Minsk, Belarus, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2008. Tortured by Stalin's henchmen and attacked by Hitler's forces, Szekal almost became one of World War II's millions of victims. But he survived the Soviet Gulag and a famous battle against the Nazis, and was honored on his 103rd birthday this week as the oldest living veteran of a celebrated Polish unit that helped defeat Hitler's army in Italy. [Agencies]