'The Zookeeper's Wife’ – A True Story of Saving Jewish Lives

'The Zookeeper's Wife’ 
A True Story of Saving Jewish Lives 
(A Polish couple who hid 300 Jews in their zoo during the Holocaust)

The following are testimonials from those who were saved, some living in Israel now.

"I remember squatting under this concrete shelf in the basement and keeping my hand over my sister's mouth to muffle her cries because she was constantly crying, day and night," said Moshe Tirosh, aged five at the time.

"When someone slammed the door upstairs, fear would pass through me, lest they find us," the 80-year-old told AFP in a telephone interview. The retired businessman and grandfather-of-seven, who has lived in Israel since 1957, still cannot believe what he lived through.

"I saw children's dead bodies on the street. Terrible things... I remember wondering why everyone wants to kill us. I couldn't understand it,"

"My parents figured that it's always darkest under a lamppost," the zoo couple's daughter Teresa Zabinska said, citing a Polish saying according to which it is best to hide in plain sight.

"My father knew that it wouldn't occur to the Germans that so many people could be hiding in a place like this with open windows and no curtains,"

"The hardest was explaining away the increase in daily meals"

Tirosh had suffered two years in the ghetto, marked by hunger, typhus and near deportation to the Treblinka death camp. To escape Warsaw's Jewish quarter, his family paid off the guards and Tirosh and his sister were thrown over the wall in sacks while their parents climbed over. On arriving at the zoo, Antonina's empathy and reassuring calm told them they were in good hands.

"She was extraordinary. I was a small boy who was very afraid of everything. But when I saw her face, I calmed right down. I still remember that feeling,"

Official Trailer: The Zookeeper's Wife

The real-life story of one working wife and mother who became a hero to hundreds during World War II.

Source: FocusFeatures