Blue Heron International Pictures LLC
Blue Heron International Pictures LLC
P.O. Box 214825
South Daytona, FL 32121
United States
Safe Haven: The Warsaw Zoo
Every good thing -- great and small -- needs defense. (John Muir)
The zookeepers' son, Ryszard, returns to his childhood home. (Photo by Piotr Bujnowicz)
Just before dawn on the morning of September 1, 1939, the German Luftwaffe rained bombs down on the city of Warsaw, Poland.
At the city zoo, zookeeper Jan Zabinski and his wife Antonina feared for the safety of their family and staff....
......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 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
For the rescuers
who risked their lives,
providing safe havens......
we are forever grateful.
(Photo by Robert Rafalski)
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International Blockbuster
Safe Haven: The Warsaw Zoo
Produced by Feliks Pastusiak and Alex Ringer
Director Gary Lester
Director of Photography
Piotr Bujnowicz
(Photo by Andrzej Tarasewicz)
Second Unit Photography (Israel)
Alex Ringer
Eli Ringer
Additional Warsaw Zoo Photography by
Dmitriy Gadasyuk and Robert Rafalski
Educational Outreach (Israel)
Marsha Goren
Ryszard Zabinski with producer Feliks Pastusiak in Warsaw
(Photo by Piotr Bujnowicz)
Moshe Tirosh (Mietek Kenigswain) thinks back about his childhood days in hiding at the Warsaw Zoo. (Photo by Alex Ringer)
World Premiere
Special Juror Mention
West Hollywood International Film Festival
August, 2009
Florida Motion Picture & Television Association
2009 Crystal Reel Awards
Best Documentary
Best Director
Best Narration
Best Editing
Best Scriptwriting
Best Trailer
Route 66 Film Festival
Springfield, Illinois
September, 2009
Orpheum Film Series
Sioux City, Iowa
October, 2009
Daytona Beach Film Festival
Daytona Beach, Florida
October, 2009
European Premiere
The Warsaw Zoo
Warsaw, Poland
October, 2009
Best Director: Short Films
Treasure Coast International Film Festival
Port St. Lucie, Florida
February, 2010
Best Documentary
Melbourne Independent Filmmakers Festival
November 2010
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT
Los Angeles Cinema Festival of Hollywood
Summer 2010
World Kids International Film Festival
Mumbai, India
September, 2011
Best Documentary
GIAA Film Festival
New York City
November, 2011
(Guild of Italian-American Actors)
Network Television Broadcasts
Israel NANA 10 Jerusalem
April 2009, April 2010
May 2011, April 2012
April 2013, April 2014
April 2015, April 2016
Safe Haven World Premiere
Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel
7000 Hollywood Blvd.
Hollywood, CA
August 8. 2009
The producers wish to thank the following people
for their contribution to this film:
Ewa Zbonikowska, TheWarsaw 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
Marsha Goren, Global Dreamers (Israel)
(Photo by Robert Rafalski)
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Safe Haven's Music
Veteran film composer Richard Band has created the stirring music heard throughout the Safe Haven documentary.
Richard works out of Los Angeles , but grew up in Sweden, Paris , and Rome. He is the son of producer/director Albert Band (The Red Badge of Courage, Face of Fire), and the brother of producer Charles Band.
Richard has recorded more than 12 film scores with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Rome Philharmonic.
In addition to movies, Richard scored multiple episodes of such popular television shows as Stargate SG-1, Walker: Texas Ranger, Seventh Heaven , and Disney s Sing Me A Song series.
Safe Haven: The Warsaw Zoo is now included in Richard Band's impressive list of film score credits. It is hard to imagine Safe Haven without his eloquent sound-track.
To learn more, please visit Richard Band Music.
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Director's Statement
Filmmaker Gary Lester on location
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"
Feliks Pastusiak and Alex Ringer are definitely world-class producers.
When asked to head up our shoot in Warsaw, Feliks wasted no time locating the heroic zookeeper's son, Ryszard Zabinski.
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.
Producer Alex Ringer in Israel
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
Klaus Zwilsky
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.
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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, thenwe can too!
It isa 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
To watch the preview, click here.
Blue Heron International Pictures LLC
P.O. Box 214825
South Daytona, FL 32121
United States