Blue Heron International Pictures LLC

 
 "Every good thing -- great and small -- needs defense."

                                                                                  John Muir

                                                                                                              (Photo by Dmitriy Gadasyuk)

                                             The Warsaw Zoo today.

 Just before dawn on the morning of September 1, 1939, the German Luftwaffe rained bombs down on the city of Warsaw, Poland.

                      (Photo courtesy of Ryszard Zabinski/Piotr Bujnowicz)

At the city zoo, zookeeper Jan Zabinski and his wife Antonina feared for the safety of their family and staff....

                                         (Photo courtesy of Ryszard Zabinski/Piotr Bujnowicz)

 ...... as well as for  the animals entrusted to their care.

                                                                                 (Photo by Robert Rafalski)

In the following days, weeks and months, the Zabinski family lost all of their beloved zoo population.

Through their heroic efforts, however, they kept the zoo alive with a different type of inhabitant: Jewish refugees.     

With the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, the plight of Warsaw's Jewish residents became extremely desperate.

If any were to survive, they would need compassionate rescuers from outside of the Ghetto.

                                                                                                           (Photo by Piotr Bujnowicz)

Risking their lives on a daily basis,  the  zookeepers successfully hid more than 300  Jews from the Gestapo during the Holocaust.  

Their villa at the zoo became a safe haven.

The zookeepers' son Ryszard returns to his childhood home. (Photo by Piotr Bujnowicz)

The Warsaw Zoo today serves as a tribute to the Zabinski family's heroism during the Holocaust.

                                                                                                            (Photo by Piotr Bujnowicz)

Safe Haven: The Warsaw Zoo   is dedicated to the memory of all those innocents lost during that time.

Of the 20,000 who fled the Warsaw Ghetto, more than 11.000 survived with the help of approximately 60,000 residents of Warsaw.

                                                          Antonina Zabinski

                                 (Photo courtesy of Ryszard Zabinski/Piotr Bujnowicz)

                   For the rescuers 

                            who risked their lives,

                               providing safe havens......

                                   we are forever grateful. 

                                                                                                          (Photo by Robert Rafalski)

               Blue Heron International Pictures

                                                                 Presents

                                                     A Gary Lester Film

  Safe Haven: The Warsaw Zoo

                   Featuring:

                  Ryszard Zabinski

                      Asia Doliner

          Moshe Tirosh (Mietek Kenigswain)

                         Narrated by:

                   Anthony Reece

                        Produced by:

      Feliks Pastusiak and   Alex Ringer

                   Richard Lester, Executive Producer

                Gloria Max, Associate Producer

                    Charlie Carlson, Associate Producer

         

                                  Piotr Bujnowicz   

          Second Unit Photography (Israel)

                       Alex Ringer

                        Eli Ringer

         Second Unit Photography (USA)

                Gary Lester, Camera

          Additional Warsaw Zoo Photography by

            Dmitriy Gadasyuk and Robert Rafalski

                 Archival photos courtesy of:

             National Archives, Washington, DC

                      Yad Vashem, Israel

                  The RIL Collection, USA

          U.S. Military Intelligence/OSS Files, USA

                      Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw  

                   Archival Film courtesy of:

         Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archives

                       The RIL Collection

 Moshe Tirosh (Mietek Kenigswain) thinks back about his childhood days in hiding at the Warsaw Zoo. (Photo by Alex Ringer)

The producers wish to thank the following people

for their contribution to this film:

Ewa Zbonikowska, The  Warsaw Zoo

Ryszard Zabinski,  son of the Polish Resistance zookeeper

Asia Doliner, Holocaust Survivor (Warsaw )

Moshe Tirosh (Mietek Kenigswain), Holocaust Survivor (Warsaw Zoo)

Claire Soria, Holocaust Survivor, (Brussels ) 

Klaus Zwilsky, Holocaust Survivor, (Berlin) 

Dr. Eleonora Bergman, Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw

  Johnathan Arnold, Haifa, Israel

Jan Jagielski, Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw

                      Stanley Diamond, Jewish Records Indexing - Poland 

Safe Haven Screenings

                                                              (Photo by Piotr Bujnowicz)

World Premiere

Special Juror Selection

 West Hollywood International Film Festival

Hotel Hollywood Roosevelt

Hollywood, California

Official Selection

 Route 66 Film Festival

Springfield, Illinois

Official Selection

    Orpheum Film Series 

    Orpheum Movie Theatre

Sioux City, Iowa

Official Selection

Lake Mary Historical Society

Lake Mary, Florida

Special Screenings

The Warsaw Zoo

Warsaw, Poland

Florida Motion Picture & Television Association

Cinematique Theater

Ormond Beach, Florida

Network Television Broadcasts

Channel 10 NANA Israel     

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In the course of making our documentary films, we have come across some incredible people. All of them have a story worth telling. All of them have a lesson about life for those who will listen. All of them are making the world a better place for our children by relating difficult experiences and sharing a wisdom which could only have been forged in the fires of adversity.

Safe Haven: The Warsaw Zoo is a tribute to ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances -- people who choose to risk their own lives in order to  save the lives of others. Jan Zabinski, his wife Antonina, and son Ryszard were three such people. During the Nazi occupation of Poland , they chose to hide 300 Jewish men, women and children where they lived and worked -- the Warsaw Zoo. it was a decision that could have cost them their lives.

When asked why he did it, Jan replied, "It was the right thing to do."

This film remembers also the ones who could not find a safe haven.........

.........Bernard Dov Ringer and Helen Yocheved who were murdered in 1942 in Auschwitz.......

........ Mosheh Markus and his wife Cecelia who died in the Warsaw Ghetto.......

.........along with the millions of other loved ones who suffered and perished with them.

May all of them never be forgotten!

                                     Jan Zabinski

Joining Ryszard Zabinski in our film are Asia Doliner and Moshe Tirosh -- two people who have suffered the unimaginable. Their compelling stories of hiding among their persecutors remind us of the consequences of hatred and intolerance. Their determination to survive the Holocaust as Jews living in occupied Warsaw is truly inspirational.

Not everyone in my film survived The Holocaust, however.

As I watched the happy faces in the color footage smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto, I could not help feeling distraught. They were the faces of the doomed before they realized the fate that would soon befall them. As you watch them smile for the camera, remember that the Holocaust is not ancient history. It comes back to haunt us under new names such as "ethnic cleansing" and "sectarian strife."

I wonder sometimes, what lessons we have learned from history.

Perhaps we should consider the words of Elie Wiesel, author of Night:

"I believe that one who hears a witness becomes a witness in turn. You can be an effective voice for memory."

May this film be one of those voices.

                                                                      Gary Lester

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                Production Notes:

                 "Can-Do Producers and Director"

At a very young age, Ryszard was involved in the life-and-death covert operation at the Warsaw Zoo. Our cameras followed him back to the zoo, visiting the war-time villa where he grew up, and even the bushes where, more than 60 years ago, an SS man took him to be executed. (The story of his miraculous escape is told in the film).

                              Ryszard Zabinski

To photograph this compelling story, Feliks called on some of his colleagues who worked with him on other shoots, including Schindler's List and The Pianist.

We were also fortunate to have Warsaw's premiere photographer, Piotr Bujnowicz as our director of photography.

Meanwhile, in Israel, Producer Alex Ringer located a Holocaust survivor who was hidden at the zoo as a child.

Moshe Tirosh, known as Miecio Kenigswain in Diane Ackerman's book The Zookeeper's Wife, shared his story with Alex, providing even more details of life at the Warsaw Zoo during the Nazi occupation.

In the United States, Director Gary Lester was interviewing Asia Doliner, who was in hiding in Warsaw pretending to be a Christian.

Asia's riveting accounts of life in the Warsaw Ghetto, the destruction of the Ghetto, and the Warsaw Uprising provide  eyewitness testimony of historical events happening beyond the zoo grounds.

Safe Haven: The Warsaw Zoo reminds us of the consequences of hatred and intolerance, a timely reminder more than 60 years after The Holocaust.

The film is also a tribute to those who would risk their own lives to save their neighbors in peril.

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          "An Unusual Safe Haven"

A photograph of Holocaust survivor Klaus Zwilsky appears briefly at the end of the film as a reminder that there were a number of hiding places for Jews fleeing Nazi persecution. Klaus had to have lived in one of the most unique and unusual safe havens, hiding in the open in full view of the Gestapo.

Few people realize that the Nazis allowed a Jewish hospital staffed by Jewish medical personnel and Jewish administrators to operate in Berlin -- the heart of the Third Reich -- throughout the entire war. The strange reasons behind this situation are presented in Daniel B. Silver's book Refuge in Hell.

Klaus, the son of the hospital's pharmacist and a hospital administrator, lived at the hospital with his parents all through the war. With the collapse of the Third Reich in April 1945, Klaus Zwilsky was finally able to celebrate his Bar Mitzvah -- the first one held in post- war Berlin.

                           Klaus Zwilsky

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     Safe Haven: The Warsaw Zoo was released  March 1, 2009.

The film is currently under consideration at eight international film festivals, and will be broadcast nationally on Israeli television.

The entire first edition of the DVD sold out within 24 hours, after more than 330,000 people watched the preview on IMDb.com.

The preview features exclusive color film footage smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto -- a permanent memorial to those who were doomed before they realized it.

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Safe Haven: The Warsaw Zoo has brought back what we call the ‘the universal meaning of humanity’ to remind us all that if people like Jan Zabinski can risk their lives to save 300 strangers in a time of adversity, then we can too!

The memoirs about the holocaust have filled libraries and museums and they sit there still -- a just  tribute to those who resisted, an embarrassing reminder to those who collaborated, and a warning to those who watched in silence.

                                                                  MANI MAKKAR, INDIA

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To view the entire 29 minute film with Hebrew subtitles, wait five seconds after clicking here.