The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story

Jan Żabiński was the director of the Warsaw Zoo. A Polish soldier who fought for independence during World War I, he met Antonina while both were studying at the Polish Academy of Fine Arts. After leaving the academy, Jan pursued a doctorate in zoology, and later he eagerly accepted the challenge of becoming the fledgling zoo’s second director. He dreamed of extending the zoo by including natural habitats for its animals, and he drew up meticulous plans to achieve his grand vision. With the help of the charismatic Antonina, Jan built relationships with national and international zoologists and politicians as he pursued his ambitious goals.

When Nazi Germany invaded Poland, Jan immediately joined the Polish Army. When the country fell under Nazi occupation, Jan became a secret leader of the Polish Underground, the Home Army. He stored war material on the zoo campus in proximity to where Germans kept their own supplies. Throughout the occupation, Jan maintained several different government jobs, which allowed him to move about the country, planning and conducting sabotage. He found ways to enter the Warsaw Ghetto and spirit out Jews. Through his connections with the resistance, he transformed the zoo’s villa into a safe house for fighters and Jewish fugitives. When the Home Army attempted to liberate Warsaw in 1944, Jan joined the fight. Seriously wounded, he spent two years in a POW camp before returning to Warsaw.

Antonina described Jan as “cool” because of his chameleon-like ability to shift from one persona to another and to remain calm in the direst circumstances. In actuality, Jan carefully planned every element of every action he took on behalf of the resistance. Many of his most daring accomplishments were intended to flaunt his skills before the unsuspecting Nazis, who held the biased view that the Slavic Polish people were intellectually “inferior” to the Teutonic Germans. 

Ryszard, Ryś, the firstborn child of the Żabińskis, grew up surrounded by wild animals he treated as pets. He shared his mother’s uncanny ability to interact at will with badgers, lynxes, and other wild species. After the Nazi bombing of the Warsaw Zoo, Ryś helped raise a rabbit, chicken, hamster, cat, and many other creatures at the zoo, primarily inside the villa where his parents, co-workers, and Guests also lived. When Antonina had to stay in her bed in 1943, Ryś assumed the care of the full menagerie of strange pets.

Surrounded by the ongoing reality of war, Ryś endured the loss of many animals he had raised and loved. His childhood was greatly restricted. Ryś learned to keep absolute secrets, the accidental divulgence of which would have resulted in the deaths of himself and his parents as well as the Guests they were protecting. As a result, he had few childhood friends. He experienced fleeting friendships with young Polish resistance fighters and the children of Guests. He escaped death on several occasions. He watched a bomb fall into the zoo compound without exploding; his mother was warned that Ryś would be shot if he kept watching German soldiers through binoculars from the villa roof; and German soldiers once took him from Antonina’s view and pretended to shoot him. Throughout the occupation, he was a dutiful servant of his parents, the Guests, and his animals.

When the Nazis occupied Warsaw, they immediately issued an edict restricting the activities and travel of Jewish citizens. Rebelling against these strictures, which increased exponentially over the following five years, many Jews sought to escape. The Żabińskis referred to the more than 300 Jews who moved through their melina as Guests.

While most of their Guests passed through their safekeeping in a matter of days, other Guests remained for months. Many influential Jewish professionals stayed at the zoo. Among these beloved friends who stayed at the villa for months were Magdalena Gross, a renowned sculptor, and Maurycy Fraenkel, a classical musician. When the war ended, the two married. The Żabińskis noted that, of the hundreds of Guests who passed through their care, only two were ever arrested by the Nazis.

Ackerman uses the presence of animals throughout the narrative as a way to reveal the virtue or malice of the human characters. When Nazi soldiers shoot some of the zoo animals for sport, it reveals the maliciousness of their character. In contrast, virtually all the Guests who came through found the animals a comforting and uplifting presence. Many commented that living in the villa was like being in Noah’s ark. This is also the reason the villa gained the beloved title “The House Under a Crazy Star.”

Ackerman also uses animals as a symbol of hope and endurance. For example, the badger that escaped the zoo when the Nazis initially bombed it reappears after the war. It had crossed the Vistula River and lived in the woods until it was found by Polish soldiers, who captured it in a trash can and restored it to the zoo, where it was loved again as a pet by Ryś and Teresa.