Warsaw Zoo during the Second World War

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Opened in 1928, by the 1930's Warsaw Zoo had become one of Europe's largest zoos housing many animals, with a particularly strong bird collection. The success was, however, short lived. When World War II broke out extensive parts of the zoo were destroyed in the bombings, many animals were killed, and others, including the zoo's special attraction (the elephant Tuzinka the first elephant born in Poland) were taken to Germany by Lutz Heck.

Dr. Jan Zabinski was the director of the zoo. He was also the author of many popular-knowledge books about biology and the psychology of animals, as well as the producer of a number of popular radio-shows. Despite the problems he faced as the director of a zoo during wartime, he was not blind to the suffering of the Jews. When the Warsaw ghetto was established, Jan and his wife, Antonina, began helping their Jewish friends. As an employee of the Warsaw municipality he was allowed to enter the ghetto. Under the pretext of supervising the trees and small public garden within the ghetto area, he visited his Jewish acquaintances and helped them as best as he could. As the situation in the ghetto deteriorated, he offered them shelter.

“Dr. Zabinski, with exceptional modesty and without any self-interest, occupied himself with the fates of his prewar Jewish suppliers... different acquaintances as well as strangers,” wrote Irena Meizel. She added: “He helped them get over to Aryan side, provided them with indispensable personal documents, looked for accommodations, and when necessary hid them at his villa or on the zoo’s grounds.” Regina Koenigstein described Zabinski's home as a modern "Noah's Ark". According to the testimonies, as many as 300 Jews found temporary shelter in the zoo’s abandoned animal cages, until they were able to relocate to permanent places of refuge elsewhere. In addition, close to a dozen Jews were sheltered in Zabinski's two-story private home on the zoo's grounds. In this dangerous undertaking he was helped by his wife, Antonina, and their young son, Ryszard, who supplied food and looked after the needs of the many distraught Jews in their care. It is believe that only two were killed after they had been released with their new identities.

Rachel Auerbach, who took part in the attempts to create a clandestine ghetto archive and who played an important role in documenting the story of the Warsaw ghetto, was in contact with Zabinski all through that period. After the ghetto was liquidated, she went into hiding and continued to work on her diary, recording events for posterity. As the front came closer to Warsaw, she gave one of her notebooks to Zabinski. He put it in a glass jar and buried it in the zoo grounds. In April 1945 Rachel Auerbach was able to retrieve her manuscript and publish it.

An active member of the Polish underground Armia Krajowa (Home Army), munitions production seems to have taken place in the grounds of the zoo. Zabinski participated in the Polish uprising in Warsaw of August and September 1944. Upon its suppression, he was taken as a prisoner to Germany. His wife continued his work, looking after the needs of some of the Jews left behind in the ruins of the city. Jan wrote in his own testimony explaining his motives: “I do not belong to any party, and no party program was my guide during the occupation... I am a Pole – a democrat. My deeds were and are a consequence of a certain psychological composition, a result of progressive-humanistic upbringing, which I received at home as well as in Kreczmar High School. Many times I wished to analyze the causes for dislike for Jews and I could not find any, besides artificially formed ones.”

Zabinski was raised with humanist values and his wife Antonina is believed to have been a Catholic; the family is often described as a Catholic one. On September 21, 1965, Yad Vashem recognized Jan Zabinski and his wife, Antonina Zabinska, as Righteous Among the Nations. On October 30, 1968 Dr. Jan Zabinski planted a tree on the Mount of Remembrance.

Jan Żabiński and his wife Antonina. Jan became director of the Warsaw zoological garden in 1929, when the zoo had already evolved from a traveling animal exhibition in 1871 to a thriving zoological garden at the right bank of the Vistula River, where it is currently still located.

Jan and Antonina were great lovers of art as well as animals: Jan had studied drawing at the School of Fine Arts and worked as a researcher at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, at the Department of Zoology and Animal Physiology. Antonina was an archivist at the same department, which is where they met.

The zoo’s owners kept in close touch with the local creative community. They opened the zoo up to many artist and musicians, who would come there to work, get inspired, or give concerts in the open air. The colourful guests and the social activism of the Jan and Antonina, soon earned their residential villa the nickname “the house under a wacky star.”

Jan and Antonia regularly nursed several injured and sick animals to health in the privacy of their own home, including lynxes, a badger, a muskrat, cockatoos, piglets, and more. Jan used to say about this: “It is not enough to research animals at a safe distance – you need to live with them to truly understand their habits and psychology.”

The zoo was thriving right up until the Second World War, when the German army invaded Poland in 1939. The bombing of Warsaw on September 1 also hit the zoo, killing many animals and urging Jan Żabiński to kill off all the predatory animals that might escape and roam the streets in subsequent bombings.

The remaining animals faced a sorry fate: the German army organized a spontaneous hunt at the zoo, shooting any animal they deemed “not valuable.” Those animals that were considered “valuable” were captured and transported to the Schorfheide reserve, close to Berlin, at the border with Poland. (As it happens, Nazi’s regularly used this nature reserve as a private hunting ground). Tuzinka the elephant was taken to the zoo in Köningsberg.

The animals that were left after all this became a food source for Warsaw locals and the army during the siege of the city. It was horrible for the Żabińskis to witness and decide on the death of their beloved animals, but the war left them little choice. Antonina Żabińska wrote of this time in her memoires: “There was this gloomy, dead calm everywhere, and I kept telling myself that it is not the dream of death and extinction, but merely ‘winter sleep’.”