The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story

CHAPTER 13

JAN AND ANTONINA FOUND NAZI RACISM INEXPLICABLE AND devilish, a disgust to the soul, and although they were already assisting friends inside the Ghetto, they pledged, despite the hazards, to help more Jews, who had figured importantly in Jan’s childhood memories and loyalties.

“I had a moral indebtedness to the Jews,” Jan once told a reporter. “My father was a staunch atheist, and because of that, in 1905, he enrolled me in the Kretshmort School, which at that time was the only school in Warsaw where the study of Christian religion wasn’t required, even though my mother was very opposed to it because she was a devout Catholic. Eighty percent of the students were Jews, and there I developed friendships with people who went on to distinguish themselves in science and art…. After graduating high school, I began teaching in the Roziker School,” also predominantly Jewish. As a result, he made intimate friendships among the Jewish intelligentsia, and many school chums lived behind Ghetto walls. Although Jan didn’t say much publicly about his father, he told a journalist that he’d chosen zoology “to spite my father, who didn’t like or appreciate animals, and didn’t allow them in the house—other than moths and flies, who entered without his permission!”

They had more in common when it came to the loyalty shown Jewish friends:

The zoo was by no means ideal for hiding refugees. The villa stood close to Ratuszowa Street, right out in the open like a lighthouse, surrounded only by cages and habitats. A clutch of houses for employees and administrative buildings lay mid-zoo, three-tenths of a mile away; acres of open land encircled the villa, most of it a park with small garden plots; railroad tracks ran south, along the Vistula River, just beyond the zoo fence; and the north side held a military zone of small wooden buildings heavily guarded by German soldiers. After Warsaw’s surrender, on the lions’ island right in the middle of the zoo, Germans had built a storehouse for weapons confiscated from the Polish army. Other German soldiers often visited the zoo as well, for a dose of greenery and quiet, and no one could predict how many might appear, or when, since they didn’t seem to favor one time of day over another. But they arrived in an off-duty frame of mind, not on patrol, and, in any case, Praski Park’s less-bombed setting offered more appealing walks.

Amazingly, Antonina never twigged one of Jan’s secrets: that with his help the Home Army kept an ammunitions dump at the zoo, buried near the moat in the elephant enclosure. (A small paneled room was found there after the war.) He knew the danger, even foolhardiness, of burying guns right in the center of the zoo, steps away from a German military warehouse, but how could he tell her? He worried that she’d be terrified and insist the family’s safety came first. Luckily, as Jan thought, it never occurred to the Germans that a Pole would be that gutsy, because they regarded Slavs as a fainthearted and stupid race fit only for physical labor.

“Knowing the German mentality,” he reasoned, “they would never expect any kind of Underground activity in a setting so exposed to public view.”

Jan always shied away from praise and underplayed his bravery, saying such things as: “I don’t understand all the fuss. If any creature is in danger, you save it, human or animal.” From interviews, his own writings, and Antonina’s accounts, he comes across as naturally private yet sociable, highly disciplined, strict with himself and his family, the sort of man we sometimes call “a cool customer,” gifted with the ability to hide his deeds and feelings, someone with enormous hart ducha (strength of will or spirit). In the Polish Underground, where acrobatic feats of daring unfolded daily, Jan bore the code name “Francis,” after Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals, and was known for his audacity, sangfroid, and risk-taking. His choosing to hide weapons and Jews in plain sight, in the heart of a Nazi encampment, proved to be good psychology, but I think it was also a kind of one-upmanship he savored, a derisive private joke. Still, discovery would have meant pitiless, on-the-spot death for him and his family, and who knows how many others. Creating a halfway house, “a stopping place for those who escaped the Ghetto, until their destinies were decided and they moved to new hideouts,” Jan discovered that being an atheist didn’t shield him from a robust sense of fate and his own personal destiny.