Today I want to find out a little bit about Jan Żabiński and Antonina Żabińska. They were a Polish couple who used their home and the grounds of the Warsaw Zoo to help Jewish people escape persecution during the Second World War.
Jan Żabiński was born on the 8th of April 1897 in Warsaw. He had a love of animals and became a zoologist and scientist. During the years between the two world wars, Jan helped to establish the Warsaw Zoo and became its director in 1929.
Antonina Erdman was born on the 18th of July 1908. She also had an interest in animals and became a writer. She produced stories and books inspired by the natural world. She married Jan, and they lived with their family in a villa inside the grounds of Warsaw Zoo.
Their lives changed massively when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939.
Warsaw was heavily bombed and the zoo was badly damaged. Many animals were sadly killed and others were removed from the zoo, leaving the zoo almost entirely empty.
During the German occupation, Jan was appointed as superintendent of Warsaw’s public parks. His work allowed him to enter the Warsaw Ghetto, where hundreds of thousands of Jewish people were being forced to live in terrible conditions.
Jan used these visits as an opportunity to make contact with Jewish friends and acquaintances. He helped people escape from the ghetto and worked with Antonina to provide them with temporary places to hide.
Some were sheltered inside the Żabiński family villa and others were hidden in empty animal enclosures and buildings around the zoo.
The danger was huge. German soldiers sometimes entered the zoo grounds, meaning those that were hiding there could have been discovered at any moment.
Antonina played an important role in keeping everyone safe. She provided them with food and developed ways of warning them when danger was approaching. Their young son Ryszard also helped the people sheltering with the family.
The zoo often acted as a temporary stopping point. Once it became possible, many of those that were hiding there were moved to other places where they could continue to live in secret.
Jan was also involved with the Polish underground resistance, the Home Army. In 1944, he fought during the Warsaw Uprising. He was wounded and later captured and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany.
Antonina stayed in Warsaw and continued to care for the people who still depended upon the family for help.
The exact number of people helped by the Żabińskis is difficult to work out, but hundreds of Jewish people are believed to have passed through the zoo or received assistance from them during the occupation.
After the war, Jan returned to his work at Warsaw Zoo, while Antonina continued writing. In 1968, she published a memoir describing life at the zoo during the occupation.
In 1965, Yad Vashem recognised Antonina and Jan Żabiński as Righteous Among the Nations for risking their own safety to help Jewish people during the Holocaust.
Antonina died on the 19th of March 1971, and Jan died on the 26th of July 1974.
Their story later became widely known through the book and film The Zookeeper’s Wife, but behind that title was a real family who turned their home and their zoo into places of refuge.
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