During World War II, the Warsaw Zoo in Poland\u2019s capital became a hideout for Jews escaping Nazi persecution. Niki Caro\u2019s film, The Zookeeper\u2019s Wife, chronicles this true story, highlighting the courage and compassion of Jan and Antonina Zabinski, a couple who risked their lives and the life of their son to protect those in danger. The film opens with Antonina Zabinski, an empathetic animal lover, making her morning rounds in the zoo to check on the animals. Dark clouds of war are gathering over Poland. Watch: 'The Zookeeper's Wife' a Tale of Heroism During the Holocaust The idyllic life of the zookeepers ends abruptly with a Nazi air raid over Warsaw, which hits the zoo and kills the majority of its animals. Filmmaker Niki Caro delivers a powerful scene of helpless caged animals dismembered and killed by the bombing. This heart-breaking waste of life is a forewarning of the Nazi attacks on human life. Nazis invade The Nazis invaded Poland September 1, 1939, and immediately started rounding up Jewish inhabitants in Warsaw, placing them in a ghetto to be starved, harassed, and exposed to the elements. The film, script written by Angela Workman, is based on Diane Ackerman\u2019s novel by the same title. The novel, a more detailed account of the zookeepers\u2019 struggle was a challenge to condense to a two-hour film, Workman said. She says the film was a labor of love by a team of women. \u201cKim Zubek, our lead producer, was a person who carried this on her shoulders for years to get this made,\u201d Workman said. \u201cShe worked really hard. I was involved with it for eight or nine years. Niki has been involved with it for years. Jessica (Chastain) stuck around when we didn\u2019t know whether we\u2019d be able to get it made. We\u2019ve had some really fierce women working on this. I\u2019m very proud of that.\u201d The largely female cast reflects the feminine point of view, said novelist Ackerman, who made Antonina Zabinski her central character. \u201cShe endangered her own life, the life of her child, but she felt it was the right thing to do.\u201d Ackerman said. \u201cHer husband was heroic in more traditional ways. He was head of an underground cell. She risked her life every single day, but she didn\u2019t hold a gun and shoot at anybody. Her form of heroism was compassionate heroism. It\u2019s something that I think people do every single day on our war-torn planet, but we don\u2019t hear about it.\u201d Filmmaker Niki Caro echoes Ackerman\u2019s viewpoint. \u201cFemininity has often been equated with weakness,\u201d she said. \u201cBut a character like Antonina shows us that you can be both very soft and very strong.\u201d Manipulating Nazis to save Jews The story pivots on Nazi official Lutz Heck, who\u2019s eyeing the remaining rare zoo animals and Antonina. Guided by greed and lust, Heck, played by Daniel Bruhl, offers assistance to Antonina by offering to take the remaining animals to Germany for safekeeping. And Heck is an historic figure. \u201cHe was Hitler\u2019s chief zoologist,\u201d Workman said. \u201cHis family, I think, still breeds Heck cattle, and everything we see in the movie about him is true. He has feelings for Antonina; he would walk in whenever he wanted (in the zoo.) He controlled them. He had very strong animal instincts, and I think that he was a predator in a way.\u201d Though fearful, Antonina manipulated Heck\u2019s feelings to convince him to let her and her husband keep the zoo open. Under Heck\u2019s nose, Antonina and her husband smuggled about 300 Jews out of the Warsaw ghetto using the vaults of the zoo as a way station for the refugees throughout the war. Jessica Chastain interprets Antonina and the \u201cgift she had in being able to communicate with all living creatures. \u201cActually, we tried to showcase that in our film,\u201d Chastain said, \u201cand the idea what it means to possess another living thing. What does it mean to be in a cage?\u201d At a red carpet event at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, Workman said that though her script is based on Ackerman\u2019s novel, it was also informed by her own family history. \u201cI am so emotional to be in this museum because I spent an enormous amount of time here when I was writing. I feel like my family\u2019s faces are on the walls of this museum. It\u2019s such an honor to be here.\u201d Message for today Chastain said the film sends a message about today\u2019s refugee crisis. \u201cI was shocked to learn that Anne Frank\u2019s family was denied a visa to the United States twice,\u201d she said. \u201cAntonina was a refugee. She was born and raised in Russia, and she found her safe place in Warsaw and then from there she created a sanctuary for others. I hope that people will see the film and be inspired by her compassion and kindness, and will do what they can to help others.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
During World War II, the Warsaw Zoo in Poland\u2019s capital became a hideout for Jews escaping Nazi persecution. Niki Caro\u2019s film, The Zookeeper\u2019s Wife, chronicles this true story, highlighting the courage and compassion of Jan and Antonina Zabinski, a couple who risked their lives and the life of their son to protect those in danger. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32872,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32871"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toptrendingnews.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}