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the State Zoological Museum archives the memoirs and letters collected by a secret group of wartime archivists who hid (in boxes and milk churns) documents that now reside at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw testimonies given to Israel’s unique Righteous Among Nations program and the superb Shoah Project and letters, diaries, sermons, memoirs, articles, and other writings by citizens of the Warsaw Ghetto. I’ve also depended on family photographs (that’s how I know Jan wore his watch on his hairy left wrist and Antonina had a thing for polka-dot dresses) conversations with their son Ryszard, various people at the Warsaw Zoo, and Warsaw women who were contemporaries of Antonina and also served the Underground writings by Lutz Heck artifacts viewed in museums, such as the dramatic Warsaw Uprising Museum and the eloquent Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. Whenever I say Antonina or Jan thought, wondered, felt, I’m quoting from their writings or interviews. In telling their story, I’ve relied on many sources detailed in the bibliography, but most of all on the memoirs (“based on my diary and loose notes”) of “the zookeeper’s wife,” Antonina Żabíńska, rich with the sensuous spell of the zoo her autobiographical children’s books, such as Life at the Zoo Jan Żabiński’s books and recollections and the interviews Antonina and Jan gave to Polish, Hebrew, and Yiddish newspapers. Through the ever-present fear of discovery, Antonina must keep her unusual household afloat, caring for both its human and animal inhabitants-otters, a badger, hyena pups, lynxes-as Europe crumbles around them. Plans are prepared for what will become the Warsaw uprising. Ammunition is buried in the elephant enclosure and explosives stored in the animal hospital.
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As the war escalates Jan becomes increasingly involved in the anti-Nazi resistance. They call this refuge from the Nazi occupation “The House Under a Crazy Star”. More “guests” hide inside the Żabińskis’s villa, emerging after dark for dinner, socializing and, on rare occasions of calm, piano concerts. With most of their animals killed, or stolen away to Berlin, zookeepers Jan and Antonina Żabiński begin smuggling Jews into the empty cages. When Germany invades Poland, Luftwaffe bombers devastate Warsaw and the city’s zoo along with it.