Extraordinary story of how fearless couple hid 300 Jews and Polish fighters from Nazis in Warsaw Zoo is turned into Hollywood movie
After seeing their animals slaughtered, Polish zoo owners set out to defy Nazi rule in World War Two by saving the lives of as many Jews as possible
AS shells thudded down on the zoo, parrots flew screeching from burning cages with their wings engulfed in flames.
Panicked zebras careered into surrounding streets, their stripes streaked with blood.
Kasia the elephant was killed immediately, her huge body lying amid the mangled, torn bodies of giraffes, antelopes and apes.
It was September 1939 and Warsaw Zoo bore the full force Nazi bombardment as Poland was invaded.
But in its ruins, the couple who ran the city’s attraction saw a chance to turn its 75 acres of cages and pens into a sanctuary of a different kind.
Between 1940 and 1944 Jan and Antonina Zabinski hid around 300 Jews and underground fighters in the zoo’s enclosures and in their own villa on the grounds under the noses of the Nazis — and all but two survived the war.
Some stayed for days until they could be found forged papers to flee Poland, others for years.
The story has now been turned into a movie, The Zookeeper’s Wife starring Jessica Chastain, as Antonina.
Jessica, 40, said of Antonina: “Not only did she save their lives but she bolstered spirits and fostered hope.
"It really is a story about the goodness in humankind.”
The Christian Zabinskis, together with son Ryszard, who was about eight at the start of the project, performed their rescues under constant threat of being discovered by the Germans, who had an army unit stationed at the zoo.
Their “guests”, as the Zabinskis called their stowaways, hid everywhere from the empty lion’s den to cages still occupied by tamer creatures like peacocks and monkeys.
A dozen with fair hair were put up in the villa and passed off as relatives to the family’s anti-Semitic housekeeper.
Others were hidden in the basement.
And everyone who was sheltered received an animal codename.
Moshe Tirosh, 79, who now lives in Israel, was five when he sheltered in the zoo with his family.
He said: “My sister and I lived in the basement of the villa, where the offices were located, and Mother and Father hid in the cages of the pheasants and monkeys.”
The family were nicknamed “the Squirrels” because Antonina had tried to bleach their dark hair blonde — but it had turned red.
The couple’s daughter Teresa, 72, who still lives in Warsaw, said of her father: “He told me there was never any question of whether to help. It was a matter of basic decency.”
Jan, played by Belgian actor Johan Heldenbergh, 50, had run the city zoo since 1929 and made it one of the most famous in Europe.
He also lectured at the city’s college of agriculture, where he had met Antonina, a secretary there.
When she married Jan and moved to their villa in the zoo in 1931 she dubbed it her “green kingdom” and threw herself into her new life.
As well as helping to run the facility, she hand-reared orphaned lynx, lion, and wolf cubs and chimpanzees in the family home.
Initially, after the bombing and the outbreak of war, Jan — who immediately joined the Polish resistance movement — saw the zoo’s obscure corners and underground chambers as an ideal place to hide weapons.
But the behaviour of a Nazi official after the bombing changed all that.
Lutz Heck was director of the Berlin Zoo and had been a family friend, but was now responsible for all the animal reserves in the Third Reich. He arrived to take his pick of the animals for German zoos.
After carting off the family’s beloved camels, llamas, hippos, lynxes and even the orphaned calf of dead elephant Kasia, he returned drunk with a rabble of SS pals.
He led them on a sickening “hunting party” inside the zoo.
Antonina and son Rys cowered inside their home as they listened to the sound of boozy laughter, gunshots — and the screams of animals dropping in cages.
She wrote in her diary: “It was sheer gratuitous slaughter . . . how many humans will die like this in the coming months?’”
It was then that she and Jan resolved to use the zoo to save as many people as they could, despite the penalty of death for such assistance.
Jan persuaded Heck to let him use the zoo as a pig farm for sustaining Third Reich troops.
This allowed him to drive a truck into the ghetto, where Jews had been imprisoned, under the guise of collecting scraps for pig food.
Inside, people were starving before being deported to death camps.
Jan, who was also boss of the city’s parks, smuggled food and money into the ghetto and people out.
He became expert at deceiving guards and would often simply walk out of the ghetto with a well-dressed Jew with fake papers claiming he or she was an associate of the parks department.
A grand piano stood in the family’s living room, and when Antonina played an Offenbach tune with the refrain “Go, go, go to Crete” it was code to her “guests” to hide as Germans were around.
In 1944 Jan joined the Warsaw Uprising, the resistance fighters’ operation to liberate the capital. He was shot and taken to a prisoner of war camp.
Antonina, who by then also had a baby daughter Teresa, stayed at the zoo — to face the ire of Germans maddened by the uprising and the advancing Russian forces.
She was holding her baby in her arms when Germans soldiers arrived hunting for collaborators in the uprising.
Antonina recalled how the soldiers threatened: “From now on, one thousand Poles will be killed for every dead German!”
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Then, in a heart-stopping moment, the Nazis grabbed young Rys and yanked him behind a garden shed. A shot rang out.
Antonina later wrote in her diary: “I couldn’t see anything, my vision became blank, then dark. I felt so weak!”
Then Rys emerged, white-faced, carrying a shot chicken. The soldiers left laughing.
The zoo was then shut down and Antonina and her children were sent to Germany.
After the war both Jan and Antonina found their way home and, reunited, began rebuilding their beloved zoo.
It is still open today and the family home serves as a museum.
Before her death in 1971, at the age of 63, Antonina wrote several children’s books.
Jan went on to become a conservation official and science writer and died in 1974, aged 77.
He often claimed his wife had been the true heroine of the saga, declaring: “Antonina was a housewife, she wasn’t involved in politics or war and was timid.
"Yet despite that she played a major role in saving others and never once complained about the danger.
“From time to time she seemed to shed her own human traits and become a panther or hyena.
“Able to adopt their fighting instinct, she arose as a fearless defender.”
- The Zookeeper’s Wife opens on April 28.
Risking all for others
ALL across Europe brave dissidents risked their lives to protect Jews from Hitler’s Final Solution.
Here we look at some of the other heroes:
OSKAR SCHINDLER: The German industrialist spent millions bribing Nazis so that he could save 1,200 Jews from the death camps. The story of how he kept them safe in his factories was turned into Oscar-winning hit Schindler’s List.
PÈRE MARIE-BENOÎT: French priest helped smuggle 4,000 Jews out of his Nazi-occupied homeland and into Italy, Spain and Switzerland.
FRANK FOLEY: Intelligence officer and passport control staffer at the British Embassy in Berlin saved an estimated 10,000 Jews by issuing them with false documents.
ALBERT GOERING: The younger brother of leading Nazi Hermann, who was Hitler’s deputy and founder of the Gestapo. Businessman Albert hated the Nazis and helped Jewish families escape by forging his brother’s signature. He also sent trucks into concentration camps with requests for labourers, then let those aboard escape. Despite this, after the war he was shunned in Germany because of his name.
SIR NICHOLAS WINTON: London stockbroker played key role in the Kinder- transport, which rescued nearly 10,000 mostly Jewish children from Germany and German-occupied Europe. He personally organised the rescue of 669 children from Czechoslovakia, finding them homes in Britain and arranging their safe passage.