The Zookeeper’s Wife (11 page)

Every large beetle monopolized one ball-tipped pin, but smaller beetles floated above one another, sometimes three to a pin. A white flag at the base of each pin told lineage in blue ink graced by swirling capitals, seraph
f
's and
d
's, written small but legibly in a steady, meticulous hand. Clearly, collecting the insects fed only part of Tenenbaum's absorption; he also cherished hours wielding microscope, pen, labels, specimens, tweezers, and display boxes crafted for museum drawers and drawing room walls, like those of his contemporary, Surrealist artist Joseph Cornell. How long had Tenenbaum curved over the minute piety of delicately arranging the beetles' legs, antennae, and mouth parts to advantage? Like Lutz Heck, Tenenbaum went on safaris, returning with beetles mounted like deer heads under glass, but more trophies could be hung on the walls of his lap-sized rooms than in any lodge or zoological museum. The sheer time it took to catalogue, gas, prepare, and pin them humbles the mind.

In one glass aerodrome sat row upon row of bombardier beetles, which can zap an attacker with a jet of scalding chemicals fired from a gun turret at the tip of its abdomen. Harmless when stored separately, the hypergolic chemicals combine in a special gland to concoct a potion volatile as nerve gas. A master of defense and weaponry, the bombardier swivels its gun turret, aims straight at a foe, and fires a 26-mile-per-hour blast of searing irritants—not in a continuous stream, but as a salvo of minute explosions. Thanks to Charles Darwin's misfortune, Tenenbaum knew the bombardier squirts a burning fluid (Darwin was foolish enough to hold one in his mouth while picking up two other bugs). But its secret chem lab was discovered only long after the war by Thomas Eisner, son of a chemist father (whom Hitler had ordered to extract gold from seawater), and a Jewish mother who painted expressionist canvases. The family fled to Spain, Uruguay, and then the United States, where Thomas became an entomologist and discovered that the bombardier's pulsed jet was oddly similar to the propulsion system Wernher von Braun and Walter Dornberger created for 29,000 German V-1 buzz bombs at Peenemünde. Bombardier beetles fire quietly, but the pulse jets of the V-1, flying at about 3,000 feet, buzzed loudly enough to terrify city dwellers as they raced overhead at 350 miles per hour. Only the pause of the telltale buzz spelled death, because when a rocket reached its target, the engine suddenly quit, and in the following suspenseful silence it plummeted to earth with a 1,870-pound warhead. The British nicknamed them "doodle-bugs," coming full circle to the weaponry of bombardier beetles.

The wonder on Ziegler's face as he peered into one sense-stealing box after another erased any doubts Antonina had about his motives, because "when he saw the beautiful beetles and butterflies, he forgot all about the world." Moving from row to row, fondling individual specimens with his eyes, reviewing armed and armored legions, he stood spellbound.

"Wunderbar! Wunderbar!"
he kept whispering to himself. "What a collection! So much work went into it!"

At last he returned to the present, the Żabíńskis, his real business. His face flushed and he looked uncomfortable as he said:

"Now. . .the doctor asks if you'll visit him. Possibly I can help, but. . ."

Ziegler's words trailed into a dangerous and inviting silence. Though he didn't risk finishing the sentence, Antonina and Jan both knew what he meant, something too delicate to propose. Jan quickly replied how immensely convenient it would be if he could ride with Ziegler to the Ghetto and see Dr. Tenenbaum.

"I need to consult with Tenenbaum right away," he explained in a professional tone, "to inquire how best to prevent the insect cases from molding."

Then, to douse any suspicion, Jan showed Ziegler his official Parks Department pass into the Ghetto, implying that the favor he asked was merely for a ride in Ziegler's limousine, nothing illegal. Still charmed by the exquisite collection he'd viewed, and determined it survive for posterity, Ziegler agreed, and off they drove.

Antonina knew Jan wanted to ride with Ziegler because most Ghetto gates were heavily guarded by German sentry on the outside and Jewish police on the inside. Occasionally the gates opened to allow someone through on official business, but passes were prized and hard come by, usually requiring connections and bribery. By chance, the office building at the corner of Leszno and ?

Zelazna Streets, which housed the Labor Bureau where Ziegler worked, formed part of the infamous Ghetto wall.

Topped with crushed glass or barbed wire and built by unpaid Jewish labor, the ten miles of wall rose to about twenty feet in places and zigzagged, closing off some streets, bisecting others lengthwise, hitting random dead ends. "The creation, existence, and destruction of the Ghetto involved a perverse civic planning," writes Philip Boehm in
Words to Outlive Us: Eyewitness Accounts from the Warsaw Ghetto
,

as the blueprints of annihilation were mapped onto a real world of schools and playgrounds, churches and synagogues, hospitals, restaurants, hotels, theaters, cafes, and bus stops. These loci of urban life. . .Residential streets changed into sites of executions; hospitals became places for administering death; cemeteries proved to be avenues of life support. . .. Under the German occupation, everyone in Warsaw became a topographer. Jews especially—whether inside the Ghetto or out—needed to know which neighborhoods were "quiet," where a roundup was being conducted, or how to navigate the sewer system to reach the Aryan side.

The outside world could be glimpsed through cracks in the walls, beyond which children played and housewives strolled home laden with provisions. Watching keyhole life thriving beyond the Ghetto became torture, and in an inspired twist, Warsaw's Uprising Museum (opened in 2005) includes a brick wall with reverse views: holes through which visitors can glimpse daily life
inside
the Ghetto, thanks to archival films.

At first there were twenty-two gates, then thirteen, and finally only four—all corral style and menacing, in stark contrast to Warsaw's delicately ornate wrought-iron gates. Bridges crossed Aryan streets instead of water. Some notorious soldiers patrolled the boundaries of the Ghetto, hunting children who dared wedge through holes in the masonry to beg or buy food on the Aryan side. Because only children were small enough to squeeze through, they became a tribe of daring smugglers and traders who risked death daily as their families' breadwinners. Jack Klajman, a tough Ghetto child who survived the war by hustling and smuggling, recalls a vicious German major the children nicknamed Frankenstein:

Frankenstein was a short, bull-legged, creepy-looking man. He loved to hunt, but I suppose he must have become bored with animals and decided that shooting Jewish children was a more enjoyable pastime. The younger the children, the more he enjoyed shooting them.

He guarded the area in a jeep with a mounted machine gun. As children would climb the wall, Frankenstein and a German assistant would zoom in from out of nowhere on their killing machine. The other man always drove so Frankenstein had quick access to his machine gun.

Often, when there were no climbers to kill, he would summon Ghetto kids who just happened to be in his line of sight—a long way from the wall and with no intention of going anywhere. . .. Your life was over. . .. He would pull out his gun and shoot you in the back of the head.

As quickly as children gouged holes in the wall, the holes were patched, then new ones dug. On rare occasions a child smuggler stole out through a gate by hiding among the legs of a labor crew, or a priest. The Ghetto walls sealed one church inside, All Saints, whose Father Godlewski not only slipped real birth certificates of deceased parishioners to the Underground, but would sometimes smuggle a child out under his long robes.

Avenues of escape did exist for the brave with friends on the other side and money for lodging and bribes, but an outside host or guardian like the Żabíńskis was essential, because one needed a hideout, food, a raft of false documents, and, depending on if one lived "on the surface" or "under the surface," different webs of agreed-upon stories. If one lived on the surface and was stopped by police, even with false documents one might be asked for the names of neighbors, family, friends, who would then be telephoned or interviewed.

Five tram lines crossed the Ghetto, pausing at a gate on either side, but when they slowed for sharp curves, people could jump off or toss bags to passengers. The conductor and Polish policeman on board both had to be bribed—the going rate was two zlotys—and one prayed that Polish passengers would stay mum. In the far corners of the Jewish cemetery, located inside the Ghetto, smugglers sometimes scaled the fence and climbed into one of two adjacent Christian cemeteries. Some people volunteered for the work gangs that left and returned to the Ghetto each day, and then bribed a gatekeeper to miscount the number of workers. Many cooperative German and Polish policemen guarded the Ghetto gates, eager for bribes, and some helped for free from sheer decency.

Beneath the Ghetto existed a literal underground—shelters and passageways, some with toilets and electricity—where people had crafted intersecting routes between and under the buildings. These led to other avenues of escape, such as slipping through a chiseled hole in the brick wall, or wading through sewers whose labyrinths ultimately led to manhole covers on the Aryan side (though sewers only reached three or four feet high and bred noxious fumes). Some people escaped by clinging to the underside of horse-drawn garbage carts that regularly visited the Ghetto and whose drivers often smuggled in food or left behind an old horse. Those who had the money could disappear in a private ambulance or in a hearse carrying supposed converts to Christian cemeteries, provided gatekeepers were bribed not to search delivery trucks and wagons. Each escapee required at least half a dozen documents and changed houses 7.5 times, on average, so it's not surprising that between 1942 and 1943 the Underground forged fifty thousand documents.

Because the wall meandered, the front of Ziegler's building was accessible from the Aryan side of the city while its seldom-used back door opened onto the Ghetto. In the next building, victims of typhus were quarantined, and across the street stood a somber three-story brick school used as a children's hospital. Unlike other gates, this one wasn't policed by Wehrmacht, Gestapo, or even Polish policemen, only a doorman charged with opening the gate for clerks; and so it promised Jan a rare, lightly guarded way in and out. But this wasn't the only building with one door on the Aryan side and one on the Ghetto side. A convenient crossroads for Jews and Poles to meet, for instance, was the District Court building on Leszno Street, whose rear door opened onto a narrow passageway leading to Mirowski Place on the Aryan side. People mingled and whispered in its corridors, traded in jewels, met friends, smuggled food, and relayed messages, while ostensibly attending court proceedings. Bribed guards and policemen looked aside as some Jews escaped, especially children, right up until the rezoning of August 1942, which finally declared the courthouse outside the Ghetto limits.

There was also a pharmacy on Długa Street with entrances on both sides of the Ghetto wall, where an obliging "pharmacist would allow anyone through who could state a good reason," and several municipal buildings where, for a few zlotys, guards sometimes allowed people to escape.

As their limousine arrived at Leszno 80, the Labor Bureau, the driver honked the horn, a guard swung open the gate, the car entered the courtyard, and they climbed out. This humdrum building contained a lifesaving office because only Jews with a labor card allowing them to work in Wehrmacht factories in the Ghetto avoided deportation.

Lingering beside the front door, Jan thanked Ziegler elaborately in a loud voice, and, though surprised by his sudden formality, Ziegler politely waited for Jan to finish, while the doorkeeper eyed them intently. Jan stretched out the scene, talking mainly in German sprinkled with Polish words, ultimately asking the by-now-impatient Ziegler about using this entrance in the future if he had any trouble with the insect collection and needed to consult about it. Ziegler told the guard to let Jan enter whenever he wished. After that, both men went in and Ziegler showed Jan the way to his upstairs office, and, while giving him a tour of the building, pointed out another staircase that led to the Ghetto door. Instead of heading straight to the Ghetto to visit Tenenbaum, Jan thought it best to spend a little time schmoozing in the dusty offices and narrow hallways of the Labor Bureau, where he made a point of saying hello to as many people as possible. Then he went back downstairs and, in a commanding voice, asked the guard to open the front gate. Drawing attention to himself as a loud, pompous, self-important official would make an impression, he reasoned, and he wanted the guard to remember him.

Two days later Jan returned, using the same boorish voice to demand the gate open for him, and the guard obliged with a welcoming gesture. This time, Jan went to the rear staircase, left the building through the Ghetto door, and visited several friends, including Tenenbaum, whom he told of the curious events involving Ziegler.

Tenenbaum explained that Ziegler had byzantine dental problems and was Dr. Lonia's continual patient; not only had Ziegler found a superb dentist in her, but all of his complex costly treatments were gratis. (Either she had no choice in the matter or she offered free treatments to gain his goodwill.) They agreed to exploit Ziegler's passion for entomology as long as possible, and discussed Underground matters. Tenenbaum now served as principal of the secret Jewish high school, and though Jan offered to smuggle him out, Tenenbaum refused, believing that he and his family stood a better chance of survival inside the Ghetto.

So Jan befriended Ziegler, visited him at his office, and occasionally went with him into the Ghetto to visit Tenenbaum and talk about insects. After a while, he became known as Ziegler's confederate, someone well in with the Labor Bureau head, which smoothed the path for him through the gate, and he often returned by himself to sneak in food to various friends. Occasionally he gave the gatekeeper small tips, as was customary, but not too much nor too often to arouse suspicion.