Zabinski’s heroic activities during WWII:

During the German air attack on Warsaw in September 1939, many of the Warsaw Zoo animals ran away and were killed, and others were transferred into other zoological gardens in Berlin and Vienna. Zabinskis decided to use the empty cages and compounds as well as their own home as hiding places for fleeing Jews and other persecuted and hounded people.

The Zabinskis villa located on the Zoo grounds and known as “The House under the Crazy Star” became a hideout for the Jews taken out by Jan Zabinski from the Warsaw ghetto despite the certain penalty of death sentence for himself and his family. The fugitives were hidden mainly in the basement, and when danger was announced they could escape the villa to the nearby empty cages through a tunnel which opening started in the basement and led to the garden. A threat of approaching danger was announced to the hiding people by an agreed musical piece. An accomplished pianist, Antonina would play the grand-piano located in the living room of the villa – a piece called “Go to Crete” from Offenbach’s operetta La Belle Helene, and she played Chopin when the danger passed and it was safe to return to the villa. Zabinskis’ young son Ryszard helped his parents and supplied food and looked after the needs of the many fugitives in their care.

Zabinskis became the caretakers and protectors of the zoo and its history, but they were forced to kill many animals, mainly for public safety reasons, and to transform the zoo into a pig farm in order to provide food for the occupying forces. Some of the most valuable animals were transported to the zoos in the Reich for “safekeeping”, including the elephant “Tuzinka”, whose birth was supervised by Jan - the 12th elephant ever born in captivity.

Jan Zabinski joined and became an active member of the Polish underground resistance Armia Krajowa (the Home Army) and was also appointed as a superintendent of the Warsaw public parks. As an employee of the city he was allowed to enter the Warsaw Ghetto in official capacity. Thus he had access, network and pretext to smuggle Jews out of the ghetto and provide them with refuge in the villa basement and in the empty animal cages. Some stayed for months and some for a few days, until Zabinskis helped them to arrange for counterfeit documents and transfer them to the “Aryan” side of the city and safe accommodations. All those activities were crimes for which they and their whole family would have been executed.

The Jewish fugitives described Zabinskis’ home as a modern “Noah’s ark” and described Dr. Zabinski as exceptionally modest and without any self-interest who helped his Jewish friends, suppliers, different acquaintances as well as strangers.

The Zabinskis managed to conceal weapons on the zoo grounds despite constant surveillance of the occupying forces for the underground army for eventual use in the Warsaw Uprising. As an active member of the Home Army Zabinski participated in the Polish uprising in Warsaw in August and September 1944. He was injured and taken as a prisoner of war to Germany upon the suppression of the uprising.

All but two persons saved by Zabinskis survived the war.

Upon liberation of Poland in 1945 Jan Zabinski returned to Warsaw and resumed his duties as the Warsaw Zoo director. The couple set to rescuing what was left of the zoo and rebuilding it. They officially reopened the zoo in 1948 while continuing to live in the little villa with their children Ryszard and Teresa in the middle of the zoo grounds until March 1951, when Jan Zabinski was forced to resign his zoo director’s post

(Ryszard on Tuzinka)