Warsaw Zoo

Listen for a moment. Under the city traffic you can hear something unusual. A peacock calls from somewhere behind the trees. Gravel crunches underfoot, wet leaves cling to the paths, and the air carries hay, damp earth and animals. You are only a short walk from the Vistula River, yet this corner of Warsaw sounds like a different world.

This is Warsaw Zoo. It sits in Praga, on the eastern bank of the river, across the water from the Old Town. Praga has always been the rougher, quieter sibling of central Warsaw. Its brick tenements and courtyards survived the Second World War better than most of the city. The zoo sits beside a green belt of parkland, so the river, the trees and the enclosures run into one another.

The zoo opened in 1928, a decade after Poland regained its independence. It was a young country building young institutions, and a public zoo was a sign of a modern capital. In its early years the gardens grew quickly. Families came by tram and on foot across the bridges. They walked under the same old trees you see now, though many of the buildings around you are much later.

In 1929 a zoologist named Jan Żabiński became the zoo's director. He lived on the grounds with his wife, Antonina, in a pale modernist villa among the enclosures. Antonina was a writer, and she had a remarkable patience with animals. Their home was famous for its unusual residents. Young and orphaned animals often lived in the house with the family, sometimes in the kitchen, sometimes on the sofa.

That quiet life ended in September 1939. Germany invaded Poland, and Warsaw came under heavy bombardment. The zoo was hit hard. Enclosures broke open, many animals died, and others had to be shot because they could not be kept safe. In the months that followed, some of the surviving animals were taken away to zoos in Germany. The gardens were left almost empty.

Here is the part that many visitors do not expect. During the occupation the Żabińskis kept the grounds in use, first as a pig farm and later for raising fur animals. On paper, this was ordinary wartime farming. In reality, it gave the family a reason to stay, and a reason for people to come and go. The empty cages, sheds and the villa itself became hiding places.

With Antonina's help, Jan, who was also a member of the Polish underground, sheltered Jewish people who had escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto. Some stayed only a night or two before moving on to other safe houses. Others stayed much longer. The number most often given is around three hundred people over the course of the war. The family did this while German soldiers and officials moved through the grounds.

According to Antonina's own account, the household used a simple warning system. When danger came near, she played a particular tune on the piano, a light piece from an operetta. The music told the hidden guests to go quiet, or to move to their hiding places. It is a small detail, and it says a great deal. In this house, a cheerful melody could mean that lives were at risk.

Jan Żabiński fought in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 and was taken prisoner. Antonina kept the household together through the city's destruction. After the war, the couple returned, and the zoo reopened in 1949. Years later, Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, honoured them as Righteous Among the Nations. That title is given to non-Jewish people who risked their lives to save Jews.

For decades, this story was well known in Poland but little known abroad. That changed with an American book, The Zookeeper's Wife, by Diane Ackerman, published in 2007. A feature film with the same title followed in 2017. Today, many visitors arrive because of the film. They are often surprised to find that the villa is real, and that it still stands among the enclosures.

The villa is now kept as a place of memory. Inside, you can see the rooms and the basement where people hid. The house does not look like a fortress. It looks like a family home, with wide windows and a garden. That ordinary appearance is part of the lesson. Courage here did not need walls or weapons. It needed a kitchen, a cellar, and people willing to open the door.

The modern zoo is a working place of conservation and education, not only a museum of its past. As you walk, you will pass large houses for heavy animals, open paddocks, aviaries and water enclosures. Keepers move between buildings with buckets and carts. Watch the animals for a while instead of hurrying on. Many of them are most active in the cooler hours, and the patient visitor sees the most.

The gardens are also simply a good place to walk. The paths curve between mature trees, and the seasons change the mood completely. In summer, the shade is deep and the paths are full of families. In autumn, the leaves fall thick on the gravel. In winter, breath and steam rise from the warm animal houses, and the sounds carry further in the cold air.

Before you leave, stand for a minute and look around you. Look at the trees, the low buildings and the paths that lead back toward the river. Most people who walk here see animals and a park. Now you know that these same paths once held a secret, kept by a family and their neighbours. As you walk out toward Praga, listen once more. The peacock may still be calling.