Jan Żabiński

Jan Żabiński (8 April 1897 – 26 July 1974) and his wife Antonina Żabińska (née Erdman) (1908–1971) were a Polish couple from Warsaw, recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations for their heroic rescue of Jews during the Holocaust in Poland. Jan Żabiński was a zoologist and zootechnician by profession, a scientist, and organizer and director of the renowned Warsaw Zoo before and during World War II. He became director of the Zoo before the outbreak of war but during the occupation of Poland also held a prestigious function of the Superintendent of the city's public parks in 1939–1945.

Jan and his wife Antonina and their son Ryszard used their personal villa and the zoo itself to shelter hundreds of displaced Jews. Additionally, Jan fought during the Warsaw Uprising, was subsequently injured and became a prisoner of war. After his liberation Żabiński became a member of the State Commission for the Preservation of Nature (Państwowa Rada Ochrony Przyrody). Jan Żabiński authored approximately 60 popular science books. His wife Antonina authored several children’s books written from the perspective of animals.

Life Jan Żabiński was born in Warsaw, the son of Józef Żabiński and his wife Helena née Strzeszewska who taught him the love of animals. Jan joined the nascent Polish Army in 1919 and took part in the Polish–Soviet War of 1920, for which he was awarded his first Cross of Valour. Jan and his wife Antonina began helping their many Jewish friends right away. Availing himself of the opportunity to visit the Warsaw ghetto ostensibly to inspect the state of the flora within the ghetto walls, Żabiński maintained contact with his Jewish colleagues and friends from before the invasion, helped them escape and find shelter on the "Aryan" side of the city. Among the many Jews he saved were sculptor Magdalena Gross with her husband Maurycy Paweł Fraenkel, writer Rachela Auerbach, Regina and Samuel Kenigswein with children, Eugenia Sylkes, Marceli Lewi-Łebkowski with family, Marysia Aszerówna, the Keller family, Professor Ludwik Hirszfeld as well as Leonia and Irena Tenenbaum, wife and daughter of entomologist Szymon Tenenbaum (who died in the Ghetto), as well as numerous others; most of whom survived the Holocaust and nominated him for the Righteous Award years later.

During the German air assault on Warsaw in September 1939, many animal enclosures had been emptied and the zoo specimens taken elsewhere. The Żabińskis decided to utilize the clean pens, cages, and stalls as the hiding places for fleeing Jews.

In 2007, an American poet and writer Diane Ackerman published The Zookeeper's Wife, a book about the Żabiński family's wartime activities that draws upon Antonina Żabińska's diary. The Polish film director Maciej Dejczer announced in 2008 that he had plans for a film about Żabiński's wartime activities.

A war drama about the Żabiński couple based on the book by Ackerman, The Zookeeper's Wife, was filmed in 2015 and released on March 31, 2017, with American actress Jessica Chastain portraying Antonina and Belgian actor Johan Heldenbergh cast as Jan.