Antonina Żabińska (1908–1971)

Antonina Żabińska, née Erdman, spent her early years in Russia, where her father Antoni worked as a railway engineer. In 1917, when she was nine years old, both of her parents were murdered in the Bolshevik Revolution. She fled to Tashkient with her aunt, who took the young orphaned girl into her care. Later, Antonina studied piano at a music conservatory. At the age 15, Antonina arrived in Warsaw, Poland, where she studied languages, drawing, and painting. To support herself while studying for a degree in archival science, she worked as a private tutor. She then got a job at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, where she met her future husband, Jan Żabiński, then a researcher in the Department of Zoology and Animal Physiology. He became the co-founder of the Warsaw Zoo, and served as its director from 1929 to 1939. Antonina Żabińska made her literary debut with a short story, "Pamiętnik żyrafy" (Memoirs of a Giraffe), published in Moje pisemko in 1934. Another story, "Jak białowieskie rysice zostały Warszawiankami" (How Female Lynxes from the Białowieża Forest Became Warsaw Residents) appeared in 1936 as the first part of a Nature Tales series. In 1939, she published her first book, Dżolly i S-ka (Jolly and Company); a postwar edition was subtitled Z dziejów Warszawskiego Ogrodu Zoologicznego (From the History of the Warsaw Zoo). During World War II, Antonina and Jan sheltered many Jews, including Warsaw Ghetto escapees, in the emptied animal enclosures and their private home on the Warsaw Zoo grounds. For these heroic and life-saving activities, they were named Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 1965. After the war, Żabińska published her children's books, Rysice (Lynxes, 1948) and Borsunio (Badger, 1964). In 1968, she released her diary/memoir of the war years, Ludzie i zwierzęta (People and Animals). In 1970, she published her last book, Nasz dom w zoo (Our House in the Zoo). In 2007, American author Diane Ackerman wrote The Zookeeper's Wife, based on the diary. It was adapted into a Hollywood film of the same name in 2017. In 2008, Antonina Żabińska was posthumously honored with the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.