 | Wydawnictwo Literackie
Kraków 2010
145x205
372 strony
oprawa twarda
ISBN: 978-83-08-04439
Translation rights: Wydawnictwo Literackie |
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Antonina ŻabińskaPeople and animals
Excerpt
"People and Animals" is the story of a place where animals had people’s names, and people were disguised with animal nicknames. This place was the Warsaw zoo during the Second World War and the German occupation. Its founder and director, Jan Żabiński, and his wife Antonina, née Erdman, saved about three hundred Jews brought out of the Warsaw ghetto. Until a better refuge could be found for them, they hid them in empty animal cages, underground tunnels and other hiding places, finally in their own villa, which stood within the grounds of the zoo, which had been destroyed by German bombardments in September 1939. Once the surviving animals had been requisitioned, it had been changed into a piggery, a fox farm and allotments. In 1965 the Żabińskis were awarded Yad Vashem’s “Righteous Among Nations” medal.
This occupation-era adventure was described by Diane Ackerman in her book, "The Zookeeper’s Wife", which reached number thirteen on the "New York Times’" list of bestsellers. These memoirs (first published by Mrs Żabińska in 1968) cover the period from 1939 to 1949, and describe the destruction of the zoo, efforts to save it, and finally its post-war rebuilding. They give us an extremely interesting picture of the daily life under occupation of two people who had quite frequent brushes with death and who always carried vials of cyanide on them. The services rendered by the Żabińskis, who had two children, were only a small part of their resistance activities. Their house was an underground contact point and also served as a hiding place for weapons and people involved in the resistance movement. As a Home Army soldier, Jan Żabiński also fought in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, was wounded and ended up in German captivity. Antonina remained with the children on the right bank of the River Vistula – the last few months of the war in particular were rich in a series of dramatic episodes, including the time when some SS-men staged the murder of her small son before his mother’s eyes. But it was just a joke, and the victim was little Rysio’s pet cockerel... As well as stories about people, these memoirs by Mrs Żabińska – who was just as eminent a biologist as her husband, and was a precursor of animal psychology – also include lots of tales about the favourite household pets in this “Noah’s Ark”, as one of the refugees who hid there, Rachela Auerbach, called the Żabińskis’ home. Antonina Żabińska also wrote several children’s books, the heroes of which were the creatures in her care.
Marek Zaleski
Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
Antonina Żabińska (1908-1971) was the author of books about animals and wife of the director of Warsaw Zoo from 1929 to 1950. In 1965 she and her husband were both awarded the title “Righteous Among Nations”.
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