I recently watched the documentary “Safe Haven, The Warsaw Zoo,” produced by New Smyrna Beach High School teacher Richard Lester with his son Gary (as director) and Edgewater resident Charlie Carlson. If you never heard of it or haven’t seen it, I suggest you go to www.IDBM.com and watch it. The film is not long but tells a riveting tale of the Warsaw Jews when the Germans took over Poland.
The Zoo became a safe haven to 300 human “animals” as the German’s thought of them. All but two of these people survived thanks to Mr. Jan Zabinski keeper of the zoo and his family, who harbored these people at their own peril since the penalty for harboring Jews was death.
He was not alone. Many among his fellow Poles were part of the underground resistance that helped many Jews survive. Mr. Zabinski joined the resistance after his zoo was bombed beginning by hiding guns at the zoo then moved to hiding people.
As I watched this I wondered if I would have had such courage. I know I would have been outraged at what was happening, but would I risk my life and that of my family for strangers?
One survivor tells of a little boy laughing from his balcony at the burning Jews the day the Germans decided to just burn the Warsaw ghetto to the ground. His grandmother told him it is no laughing matter. The Jews are human beings, too, and we don’t know yet what will happen to us.
Knowing this could happen to you might spur one to be braver, but I still wonder.
Americans have not had to endure such things. es, we have had dust bowls, depressions, bootlegging wars and such surround us, but nothing like an entire population in danger of being annihilated just for being who they are. We have not run to shelters while our towns and cities were being bombed. How can we relate when this hasn't happened with the exception of Pearl Harbor, 9/11 or the Oklahoma City bombing? All isolated incidents.
We can’t but we can remember and do everything in our power to see that such a thing as the Holocaust never happens again.
As Klaus Zwilsky said, “There was a Holocaust and it should be remembered”.
To forget it means to repeat it and that should never happen.