The Zookeeper's Wife is a war story about Warsaw under siege and the Jewish holocaust. Jan Zabinski, the zookeeper, and his wife Antonina ran the Warsaw zoo, but when the animals were shot for sport by a German zookeeper Lutz Heck after selectively taking the preferred and rare animals (European bison, Przywalski horses which had only been "discovered" in 1879, and a few others) for Nazi selective breeding, Jan and Antonina stayed on at the zoo to assist in the running of a fur farm for making fur coats for the Nazis. [Under the Third Reich, animals became noble, mythic, almost angelic -- including humans, of course, but not Slavs, Gypsies, Catholics, or Jews. Therefore, breeding programs were for the selected animals and medical procedures and experiments were for the undesirably "humans". The subjects of Auschwitz's operating doctor Mengele could be operated on without painkillers, but a remarkable example of Nazi zoophilia was that a leading biologist was once punished for not giving worms enough anesthesia during an experiment.]
The zoo, despite its loss of wild animals, was a cover for hiding Jews right under the invaders' noses. In the course of the war Jan and Antonina managed to save 300 by hiding them on the zoo grounds, which were, by the way, right next to a Nazi compound. The Jews referred to as "guests" were given animal names that reflected their character and their cage of domicile. This naming method also prevented slip-of-the-tongues or prevented people who overheard their talk from guessing the truth of what really was going on at the zoo. The people who lodged in the lion's cage were, therefore, called the lions. "Pheasants" often came in the night and lodged in the pheasant house, only to fly a few days later when their trail wasn't so hot.
During the five years of the war, 860,000 Poles were uprooted and resettled; 75,000 Germans took over their lands; 1,300,000 Poles were shipped to Germany as slave labor, and 330,000 simply shot. With ingenuity the Polish Resistance sabotaged German equipment, derailed trains, blew up bridges, printed over 1,100 periodicals, made radio broadcasts, "illegally" taught in schools and colleges (attended by 100,000 students), aided Jews in hiding, supplied arms, made bombs, assassinated Gestapo agents, rescued prisoners, staged secret plays, published books, held its own law courts, and ran couriers to and from the London-based government-in-exile. At the height of the war, 380,000 soldiers with Jan Zabinski among them comprised the military wing of the Home Army.
Jan was the leader of an Underground cell, and he used the delivery of hay and fodder for the animals as a way to bring in and pass on explosives and other counter-intelligence equipment, which Antonina never knew about until after the war. He poisoned pigs, butchered them, and then arranged the meat to be eaten by German soldiers. During one month in 1943, his cell derailed 17 trains and damaged 100 locomotives! Antonina basically knew that he was part of the resistance but not that he led parts of it so actively, often narrowly escaping capture or death. Antonina would only learn of his great exploits after the war and Jan's return from a POW camp. Jan figured that Antonina had enough stress on her plate with taking care and protecting her very young son, and of course ensuring the meals, shelter and safety of her continue flow of "guests".
In the earlier part of the war Germans established food lines for the starving people of Warsaw. They calculated a calorie-feeding system for the differing races who stood in three separate food lines based on race. The Germans received 2,613 calories of food per day, the Poles 669, and the Jews 184. German Governor Frank who controlled all matters in Warsaw declared, "I ask nothing of the Jews except that they disappear."
According to German figures, Germans shipped 316,822 people from Warsaw to concentration camps between early 1942 and January 1943. Many were shot in the ghetto so the death rate was actually much higher. Aided by friends on the Aryan side, tens of thousands escaped the ghetto, but some who stayed, such as Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the ghetto's Hasidic rabbi, revealed a tigerish struggle with faith as was discovered after the war by his discovered diary. How could anyone reconcile the agony of the Holocaust with Hasidim, a dancing religion that teaches love, joy, and celebration? During World War II, 30-40% of the world's Jews were killed, but more specifically 80-90% of the Orthodox community was wiped out; this was the group that kept alive the ancient tradition of mysticism and meditation traced back to the Old Testament world of the prophets.
In 1941, Governor Frank decreed everyone must have an identity card complete with serial number and fingerprints. For two years, Polish offices responsible for making the cards stalled. Meanwhile, they along with Underground offices and greedy opportunists were able to set up a system for making fictitious identity cards. Hordes of people suddenly seemed to have lost their records (born in Russia, born to Muslim Poles, records burned in a church fire), so needed to reissued identity credentials. By 1943 it was commonly known that 15% of all identity cards and 25% of all working papers had been forged.
After the war and his return from the POW slave labor camp, Jan was forced to retire from zookeeping at the age of 54. Times were hard after the war and anyone who praised pre-war independence or resistance during the war (and especially for someone who fought in such a war) were judged to be dangerous. Jan retired from zookeeping but still devoted to zoology, he focused on writing and ended up writing 50 books on the lives of animals and conservationism. He also spent much time writing and researching the pedigree of the European bison that had been returned to Warsaw by Lutz Heck, which turned out to be good since Germany was bombed right afterwards killing its bison herd. Antonina, after the war, stayed in contact with the former "guests" who were spread among many countries. She and Jan never left Poland, but their hearts remained bound with all of the many people they helped save.
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Some of the 300 "guests were Irena Mayzel, Kazio and Ludwinia Kramsztyk, Dr. Ludwig Hirszfeld (a specialist in communicable diseases), Dr. Roza Anzelowna from the National Hygiene Institute, the Lemi-Lebkowski family, Mrs. Poznanska, Dr. Lonia Tenenbaum, Mrs. Weiss (wife of a lawyer), the Keller family, Marysia Aszer, journalist Maria Aszerowna, Rachela Auerbach, the Kenigswein family, Drs. Anzelm and Kinszerbau, Eugienia "Genia" Sylkes, Magdalena Gross, Maurycy Fraenkel, and Irena Sendler, among many others. All 300 "guests" survived the war except Kazio and Ludwinia Kramsztyk (cousins of renowned painter Roman Kramsztyk), Dr. Hirszfeld (specialist in infectious diseases), and Dr. Roza Anzelowna and her mother. They were arrested by the Gestapo a few months after leaving the zoo and were summarily killed.
