Jan and Antonina Żabiński - recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations (honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from the genocide) on September 21, 1965 - were the zookeepers of the Warsaw zoo who helped and saved hundreds of Jews escaping from the Nazi persecution. They allowed the Jews to found temporary shelter in the zoo’s abandoned animal cells, until they were able to relocate to permanent places of refuge elsewhere and also sheltered a dozen Jews in their two private home on the zoo's grounds. Despite the pain of losing their animals, the spouses took advantage of their position to help others. Moreover, Antonia and their young son Ryszard fed and cared for the Jews who they had given shelter to at the zoo. The zookeeper’s wife - a teacher and respected author who published children's books about animals - wrote a diary during the occupation which is the base of the Diane Ackerman’s book which tells her story.
Her story also inspired the 2017 movie “The Zookeeper's Wife” - a war drama directed by Niki Caro - that was firstly presented last May in London by Dr Arkady Rzegocki, Ambassador of the Republic of Poland in the UK and Antony Lishak, director of Learning from the Righteous - a London educational charity for children inspired by the stories of the Righteous Among the Nations. Every year Lishak, together with the Polish Embassy, takes care to celebrate the European Day of the Righteous, and the importance of these themes. He wrote a book, Stars, based on the work of Jan and Antonina Zabinski, with whom he wants to encourage children to consider the themes of courage and altruism.
On Tuesday the 26th of September 2017, at the Cinéma Galerie in the well known Queen’s Gallery in Bruxelles, it will take place the screening of the movie. Before the showing there will be a discussion about the phenomena of The Righteous Among the Nations held by Anna Stróż, Director of the Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews in World War II (Markowa, Poland) and Antony Lishak.
Lishak just become one of our Ambassador. He is now working on his 2018 projects dedicated to the figure of Irena Sendler - a Polish nurse who worked with the Resistance in Poland occupied during the Second World War and rescued about 2,500 Jewish children, together with some twenty other members of the Polish Resistance.
The Polish Parliament has officially designated 2018 as the year of Irena Sendler, and together with Learning from the Righteous we are going to inaugurate in her honour a Garden in Nottingham.
Movie Trailer: