The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story

by Diane Ackerman

  Many ancient cultures worshipped the aurochs bull, especially in Egypt, Cyprus, Sardinia, and Crete (whose trans-species ruler supposedly descended from a sacred bull). Zeus often assumed the shape of a bull in Greek myth, the better to ravage alluring mortals and produce offspring with magical gifts; when he abducted Europa, it was in the guise of an aurochs, a great black bull with short beard and giant forward-pointing horns (like those on long-horned cattle, or on the helmets of heroes in the Nibelungen). What better totemic animal for the Third Reich? Heck's passion for the project was shared by top Nazi officials, making it clear that Heck's work was not just about the re-creation of extinct species. After Hitler came to power, the biological aims of the Nazi movement spawned many projects to establish racial purity, which justified acts of sterilization, euthanasia, and mass murder. One of the Third Reich's key scientists, Heck's colleague and good friend Eugene Fischer, founded the "Institute of Anthropology, Genetics, and Eugenics," which favored Josef Mengele and other equally sadistic SS doctors who used concentration camp inmates as guinea pigs.

  Fascinated by violence and the red-blooded manly spirit—naturally brave, daring, fierce, hardy, sane, lusty, strong-willed—Eugene Fischer believed that mutations in human beings were as destructive as those in domestic animals, and that interbreeding was wilting the human race in the same way that it had already denatured certain "beautiful, good, and heroic" wild animals, losing the potent original in the genetic clutter. The roots of Nazism fed on a lively occultism that spawned the Thule Society, the Germanenorden, the Völkisch movement, Pan-Germanism, and other nationalist cults that believed in a race of Aryan god-men and the urgency of exterminating all inferiors. They exalted superhuman ancestors, whose ancient gnostic rule had brought the Aryans wisdom, power, and prosperity in a prehistoric age until it was supplanted by an alien and hostile culture (namely, Jews, Catholics, and Freemasons); these ancestors were supposed to have encoded their salvation-bringing knowledge in cryptic forms (e.g., runes, myths, traditions), which could be deciphered ultimately only by their spiritual heirs.

  This ideal of racial purity really bloomed with Konrad Lorenz, a Nobel scientist highly respected in Nazi circles, who shared Oswald Spengler's belief popularized in The Decline of the West (1920) that cultures inevitably decay—but not Spengler's pessimism. Instead he turned to the domestication of animals as an example of how cultures decline, through haphazard breeding of robust and humdrum stock, and championed a biological solution: racial hygienics, a "deliberate, scientifically founded race policy" in which ruin is prevented by the elimination of "degenerate" types. Lorenz used the terms species, race, and Volk interchangeably and warned that "the healthy volkish body often does not 'notice' how it is being pervaded by elements of decay." Describing that decay as the cancer of a physically ugly people and arguing that each animal's goal is the survival of its species, he invoked an ethical commandment he claimed the Bible supported—"Thou shalt love the future of your Volk above all else"—and called for dividing people between those of "full value" and those of "inferior value" (which included whole races and anyone born with mental or physical disabilities), purging the feeble, both in humans and animals.

  Heck agreed, aspiring to nothing less than recasting Germany's natural world, cleansing it, polishing it, perfecting it. A true believer from the first stirrings of Nazism, Heck ingratiated himself with the SS, imbibed Fischer's and Lorenz's beliefs about racial purity, and became a favorite with Hitler and, especially, Hermann Göring, his ideal patron. In this sanitary utopia, Heck's job, essentially, was to reinvent nature, and he found Göring a generous patron with deep pockets. In return, Heck wanted to give Göring dominion over Poland's greatest natural treasure, the fantastic lost-in-time preserve on the Polish-Belarussian border, Białowieża. As Heck appreciated, it made the ultimate gift for a man who stamped his coat of arms on most possessions and liked to dress in "pseudo-medieval outfits of long leather jerkins, soft top boots, and voluminous silk shirts, and go marching around his house and estate carrying a spear." Many aristocrats held key positions in the Nazi Party and most of the high command owned hunting lodges or estates, so an important facet of Heck's job was bagging the best hunting preserves and stocking them in novel ways. Dotted with medieval castles, inheritor of Europe's only primeval forest, Poland boasted some of the finest hunting on the continent. Prewar photographs place Göring at his sumptuously appointed hunting lodge northeast of Berlin, on an estate stretching to the Baltic, complete with a 16,000-acre private preserve which he stocked with elk, deer, wild boar, antelope, and other game animals.

  More broadly, the Nazis were ardent animal lovers and environmentalists who promoted calisthenics and healthy living, regular trips into the countryside, and far-reaching animal rights policies as they rose to power. Göring took pride in sponsoring wildlife sanctuaries ("green lungs") as both recreation and conservation areas, and carving out great highways flanked by scenic vistas. That appealed to Lutz Heck as it did to many other world-class scientists, such as physicist Werner Heisenberg, biologist Karl von Frisch, and rocket designer Wernher von Braun. Under the Third Reich, animals became noble, mythic, almost angelic—including humans, of course, but not Slavs, Gypsies, Catholics, or Jews. Although Mengele's subjects could be operated on without any painkillers at all, a remarkable example of Nazi zoophilia is that a leading biologist was once punished for not giving worms enough anesthesia during an experiment.

  CHAPTER 9

  WITH BLACKOUT IN EFFECT AND MOST OF THE ANIMALS GONE, dawn no longer announced itself by spilling light into the bedroom and unleashing the zoo's otherworldly chorale. One awoke in darkness and silence, the bedroom windows sealed with plywood and most of the animal calls either missing or muffled. In a quiet that dense, body sounds become audible, one hears blood surging and the bellows of the lungs. In a darkness that deep, fireflies dance across eyes that see into themselves. If Jan were dressing beside the terrace door, Antonina wouldn't have spotted him. If she reached a hand over to the other side of the bed, patted around the pillow, and found it empty, she might have been tempted to loll with memories of zoo life before the war, lost in the dreamy lucidity of her children's books. But on this day, Antonina needed to get busy with her chores, since there were still some animals left to feed, Ryś to dress for school, and the house to prepare for Heck's visit.

  Antonina noted that she found Heck "a true German romantic," naïve in his political views and conceited perhaps, but courtly and impressive. She was flattered by his attention, and learned from a mutual friend that she reminded him of his first great love, or so he swore. Their paths rarely crossed, but she and Jan did visit the Berlin Zoo now and then, and Heck had sent them photographs taken on expeditions with cordial letters in which he praised their work.

  Antonina slipped into one of several polka-dot dresses she fancied for social occasions (some had a lace or ruffled collar). Photographs almost always show her covered in small lynx-like spots or large pale polka dots against a black or navy blue background that set off her light hair.

  From the porch, Jan and Antonina could see Heck's car pass through the main gate—and they no doubt mustered smiles by the time he pulled up.

  "Hello, my friends!" Heck said, climbing out. A tall, muscular man with hair combed back and a dark, neatly kept mustache, Heck now wore the uniform of a Nazi officer and the effect was jarring, even if expected, since they were used to seeing him in civilian, zoo, or hunting clothes.

  He and Jan shook hands warmly, and he cupped Antonina's hand and kissed it. One can be certain of that, since it was the custom, but not how this "true German romantic" might have kissed it. Casually or with a flourish? Lips touching the skin or hovering a breath away? As with a handshake, a hand kiss may reflect subtle feelings—a salute to femininity, a quaking heart, a grudging obedience, a split second of crypto-devotion.

  He and Jan would have discussed raising rare animals, particularly those of special interest to Heck, whose life's mis
sion—some would say obsession—dovetailed beautifully with the Nazi desire for purebred horses to ride and purebred animals to hunt.

  When it came to rare animals, Jan and Lutz shared a love for those native to Poland, especially the big woolly forest bison (Bison bison bonasus), bearded cousin to the North American buffalo (Bison bison), and Europe's heaviest land animal. As the recognized expert on these bovines, Jan played a key role in the International Society for the Preservation of the European Bison, founded in Berlin in 1923, with a first agenda of locating all the remaining forest bison in zoos and private collections. It found fifty-four, most beyond breeding age, and in 1932 Heinz Heck traced pedigrees in the first European Bison Stud Book.

  Antonina later wrote that as Heck reminisced about their meetings before the war and how much they had in common, once again praising their efforts with the young zoo, she felt hopeful. At last talk turned to the real reason for Heck's visit, which according to Antonina went like this:

  "I'm giving you my pledge," he said solemnly. "You can trust me. Although I don't really have any influence over German high command, I'll try nonetheless to persuade them to be lenient with your zoo. Meanwhile, I'll take your most important animals to Germany, but I swear I'll take good care of them. My friends, please think of your animals as a loan, and immediately after the war I'll return them to you." He smiled reassuringly at Antonina. "And I will be personally responsible for your favorites, the lynxes, Mrs. Żabińska. I'm positive they'll find a good home in my Schorfheide zoo."

  After that, conversation opened to sensitive political topics, including the fate of bomb-ravaged Warsaw.

  "At least there's one good thing to celebrate," Heck said, "that the nightmare of September in Warsaw is over and that the Wehrmacht has no further plans to bomb the city."

  "What will you do with all your rare animals if war comes?"

  "I've been asked that a lot, along with: 'What will you do with the dangerous ones? Suppose your animals escape during an air raid,' and so on. These are terrible thoughts. A vision of Berlin and my zoo after a bombardment by the English is a personal nightmare. I don't want to imagine what might happen to other European zoos if they're bombed. I suppose that's why it grieves me so much to witness your loss, my friends. It's terrible, and I'll do everything I can to help."

  "Germany has already turned against Russia. . .."

  "And rightfully so," Heck said, "but overpowering Russia can't happen without England's help, and in the present situation, with England on the other side, our chance of winning is very small."

  With so much at stake, Antonina studied Heck carefully. As fleeting emotions stalk it, a face can leak fear or the guilt of a forming lie. The war had a way of curdling her trust in people, but Warsaw's devastation, and the zoo's, clearly rattled Heck. Also, his lack of enthusiasm for Hitler's decisions surprised her, indeed she found "such words, coming from a functionary of the Third Reich, quite shocking." Especially since the Heck she had met before the war rarely shared his political opinions and harped on "German infallibility." Nonetheless, he would soon be shipping her lynxes and other animals to Germany, to be taken care of, he'd said, on loan, he'd said, and she really had no choice but to comply, stay cordial, and hope for the best.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE LUTZ HECK THAT EMERGES FROM HIS WRITINGS AND actions drifted like a weather vane: charming when need be, cold-blooded when need be, tigerish or endearing, depending on his goal. Still, it is surprising that Heck the zoologist chose to ignore the accepted theory of hybrid vigor: that interbreeding strengthens a bloodline. He must have known that mongrels enjoy better immune systems and have more tricks up their genetic sleeves, while in a closely knit species, however "perfect," any illness that kills one animal threatens to wipe out all the others, which is why zoos keep careful studbooks of endangered animals such as cheetahs and forest bison and try to mate them advantageously. In any case, in the distant past, long before anyone was recognizably Aryan, our ancestors shared the world with other flavors of hominids, and interbreeding among neighbors often took place, producing hardier, nastier offspring who thrived. All present-day humans descend from that robust, talkative mix, specifically from a genetic bottleneck of only about one hundred individuals. A 2006 study of mitochondrial DNA tracks Ashkenazi Jews (about 92 percent of the world's Jews in 1931) back to four women, who migrated from the Near East to Italy in the second and third centuries. All of humanity can be traced back to the gene pool of one person, some say to a man, some a woman. It's hard to imagine our fate being as iffy as that, but we are natural wonders.

  Maybe, after decades of observing wild animals, Heck regarded ethnic cleansing as hygienic and inevitable, an engine of reform, replacing one genetic line with an even fitter one, resembling a drama that unfolds throughout the animal kingdom. The usual scenario—using lions as an example—is that an aggressor invades a neighboring pride, kills the lead male and slaughters its young, forcibly mates with the females, thereby establishing his own bloodline, and grabs the previous male's territory. Human beings, gifted at subterfuge and denial yet disquieted by morals, disguise such instincts in terms like self-defense, necessity, loyalty, group welfare, etc. Such was the case in 1915, for example, when Turks massacred Armenians during World War I; in the mid-1990s, when Christian Serbs in Bosnia began exterminating the country's Muslims; and in 1994, in Rwanda, when hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered (and women raped) in warfare between the Hutus and the Tutsis.

  The Holocaust was different, far more premeditated, high-tech, and methodical, and, at the same time, more primitive, as biologist Lecomte du Noüy argues in La dignite humaine (1944): "Germany's crime is the greatest crime the world has ever known, because it is not on the scale of History: it is on the scale of evolution." That's not to say humans haven't tampered with evolution in the past—we know we've driven many animals to extinction, and we may well have done the same to other lines of humans. Even so, what's instinctive isn't inevitable, we sometimes bridle unruly instincts, we don't always play by nature's rules. No doubt Hitler's twin imperatives of purifying the bloodline while grabbing territory felt right along an ancient nerve in people like Heck, to whom it may even have seemed a diabolical necessity.

  Heck was also a pragmatist, and Polish lands would soon be re-formed by Germans, zoos included. So when Heck visited the bombed-out Warsaw Zoo, he hid a bleak agenda: his visits were an excuse to loot the finest animals for German zoos and preserves, along with priceless breeding records. Together with his brother Heinz, he hoped to benefit the new German empire and restore the natural environment's lost zest, just as Hitler hoped to reinvigorate the human race.

  Repeatedly, Heck swore to the Żabíńskis that he had nothing to do with closing their zoo and that his flagging influence with high command wasn't enough to sway generals. Yet Antonina suspected he was lying, that he wielded enormous influence with higher-ups, and might even be personally responsible for their fate. The future of their doomed zoo tortured the Żabíńskis, who feared that if it were torn down, plowed up, built on, it would vanish among the casualties of war. Regardless, Jan had to stay at the zoo, whatever that might entail, because it served the Underground, whose foothold in the Praga district in time reached 90 platoons with 6,000 soldiers, the largest pool of saboteurs in the city.

  The Home Army, a clandestine branch of the Polish military that took orders from the Polish government-in-exile based in London, fielded a strong hierarchy with a network of scattered cells and many arms dumps, grenade factories, schools, safe houses, messengers, and labs for making weapons, explosives, and radio receivers. As a Home Army lieutenant, Jan sought to disguise the zoo as something the Third Reich might wish to keep intact. The Germans had troops to feed and they loved pork, so he approached Lutz Heck about starting a large pig farm using the ramshackle zoo buildings, knowing that raising pigs in a harsh climate would ensure well-kept buildings and grounds, and even a little income for some of the old staff. According to te
stimony he gave to the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, by using the ruse of gathering scraps for feeding pigs, he hoped to "bring notes, bacon, and butter and carry messages for friends" in the Ghetto. Antonina wrote:

  We knew that [Heck] was a liar and with great sadness we understood that now there was no hope for saving our zoo. In this situation we decided to talk to Heck about our next plan. Jan wanted to start a large pig farm using our zoo buildings. . .. But we lost our hope about the wild animals in the zoo; Germans were not interested in keeping them alive.

  She was right, for although Heck consented to the pig farm, the welfare of the animals not "important" enough for his breeding trials was another matter. First, a noisy caravan of arriving and departing trucks continued for days, hauling the orphan elephant Tuzinka off to Königsberg; shipping the camels and llamas to Hanover; sending the hippopotamuses to Nuremberg; dispatching the Przywalski horses to his brother Heinz, in Munich; and claiming the lynxes, zebras, and bison for the Berlin Zoo. Antonina worried how the upheaval might confuse the animals, which, at journey's end, faced new enclosures, new staff, cajoling or yelling in a new language, new routines, new micro-climates, new mealtimes. Everything would take getting used to, especially new cage-mates and keepers and the sudden loss of herd or family members. All that tumult after the shock of recently being bombed and nearly incinerated. Writing of it, she experienced their suffering twice, as human friend and baffled victim.

  After Heck swiped all the animals he wanted for breeding, he decided to host a New Year's Eve shooting party, an old northern European holiday custom based on the pagan belief that noise scares away evil spirits. Traditionally, young men rode from farm to farm, shooting and whooping, banishing the demons, until they were invited indoors for drinks. Sometimes boys circled trees while shooting rifles, ringing bells, and banging on pots and pans, taking part in a timeless ritual designed to rouse nature from her slumber and fill the trees with fruit, the land with a rich harvest.