Eighty years ago, on September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland and World War II began. Last year, I wrote about William Klein, the father of Bobby, one of my good friends growing up. A native of Czechoslovakia, Mr. Klein survived the Holocaust, spending time in the Warsaw Ghetto and in Auschwitz.
In 1939, the Jewish community made up over thirty percent of Warsaw’s population, but 320,000 died during the war — over ninety percent of the Jews. Despite penalty of execution if caught, an estimated 70,000-90,000 non-Jewish citizens of Warsaw helped hide and rescue their Jewish neighbors. 28,000 targeted people escaped death because others chose to risk everything to resist evil.
Jan Zabinski and his wife Antonina were two such heroes. Their story is depicted in The Zookeeper’s Wife, a movie filmed in 2017, and based on the 2007 book of the same title written by Diane Ackerman. Diane used the diary of Antonina to tell the story. At the age of 87, Ryszard Zabinski died in Warsaw April 18, 2019. Only seven years old at the outbreak of the war, he helped take food to the hiding strangers on his parents’ property. “Yes, we were risking death but, to me, it was just the natural thing to do. In these times, many people risked their lives.”
In 1912, most could not understand why a well-known Jewish pediatrician named Henryk Goldszmit retired from his medical career and started an orphanage for boys and girls in Warsaw. Henryk was also an author who used the pen name Janusz Korczak to write books to help parents and teachers prepare children for life.
When Jews were forced into the Ghetto in 1940, Korczak moved the orphanage inside the district. A man of influence, he had several opportunities to escape but declined them all, choosing instead to remain with his children and help them navigate the ever-increasing persecution. In the tiny section of town where the enemy restricted individual food rations to 181 calories per day, Korczak taught the young to pray like this: “Thank you, Merciful Lord, for having arranged to provide flowers with fragrance, glow worms with their glow, and to make stars in the sky sparkle.”
In 1942, he accompanied his children to the trains that took innocents to their deaths in Treblinka. Joshua Perle was an eyewitness: “A miracle occurred; two hundred pure souls, condemned to death, did not weep. Not one of them ran away. None tried to hide. Like stricken swallows they clung to their teacher and mentor, to their father and brother, Januzsz Korczak.” The nations of Russia, Poland, and Israel have each honored this man who demonstrated ultimate love.
Sacrificial love captures the world’s attention. God knows every instance of such love. Jesus highlighted it when He said, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for his friends.” (John 14:13) He then called His disciples ‘friends’… and laid down His life for them… and for us. May we follow in His steps.
“The reason My Father loves Me is that I lay down My life – only to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord.” John 10:17-18
The Zookeeper’s Wife, by Diane Ackerman; ©2007 W. W. Norton, New York; pp 250-260