Jan Żabiński (1897–1974)

Jan Żabiński was born in Warsaw, Poland. His parents were Józef Żabiński and his wife Helena (née Strzeszewska), who shared her love of animals with her son. In 1919, Jan joined the Polish Army and fought in the Polish–Soviet War of 1920, for which he was awarded his first Cross of Valour. During the interwar period, he earned doctoral degrees in agronomy engineering and physiology and became an agricultural engineer, although he preferred zoology. While working as a researcher at the Institute of Zoology and Animal Physiology of the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, he met his future wife, Antonina Erdman, an archivist and writer. Żabiński became co-founder of the Warsaw Zoo, and served as its director from 1929 until Nazi Germany's 1939 invasion of Poland in World War II. During the German Occupation, Żabiński was appointed superintendent of the public parks. As an employee of the city of Warsaw, he was allowed to enter the Warsaw Ghetto. He and his wife Antonina Żabińska began helping their Jewish friends and colleagues escape the Ghetto and sheltered them in the empty Zoo enclosures or in their private home on the Zoo grounds. Among the many Jews he saved were sculptor Magdalena Gross with her husband Maurycy Paweł Fraenkel, writer Rachela Auerbach, Regina and Samuel Kenigswein with their children, Eugenia Sylkes, Marceli Lewi-Łebkowski with his family, Marysia Aszerówna, Prof. Ludwik Hirszfeld, and Leonia and Irena Tenenbaum, the wife and daughter of entomologist Szymon Tenenbaum, who died in the Ghetto. He supported his family by giving lectures and tutorials in clandestine schools. Żabiński was an active member of the Polish resistance movement Armia Krajowa (the Home Army), and participated in the Warsaw Uprising in August-September 1944. He was taken prisoner and held in camps in Germany until the end of the war. During this time, Antonina Żabińska continued their work. For their heroic efforts, Jan and Antonina were named Righteous Among the Nations in 1965. After the war ended in 1945, Żabiński resumed his position as director of the Warsaw Zoo, and served until 1951. During his career, Żabiński wrote about 60 popular science books. In 2008, he was posthumously awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta with the Star by President Lech Kaczyński. In 2007, American author Diane Ackerman published The Zookeeper's Wife, a book based on Antonina's published diary of the war years. It was adapted into a Hollywood film of the same name in 2017.