Ithaca City of Asylum
Providing refuge for persecuted writers and artists since 2001
Ithaca City of Asylum on WRFI Friday, Sept. 7, 4-5 p.m.
Ithaca City of Asylum will get some air time Friday, Sept. 7, 4-5 p.m. on the Human Rights and Social Justice Program on WRFI 88.1 FM.
Board members Edward Hower and Kate Blackwood will have a conversation with host Ute Ritz-Deutch about the project’s mission, about freedom of expression, about about the issues and challenges writers face when they are persecuted for what they write. They’ll also share details and insight about the upcoming Voices of Freedom event October 4 at Buffalo Street Books.
Turkish researcher becomes her own subject
As a political scientist studying the relationship between academia and government, Simten Coşar knew a lot about the ways in which official ideology can undermine academic independence.
Her doctoral thesis was a study of the state and the intellectual in Turkey. As a professor in Ankara, she advised graduate students, wrote articles and books and lectured widely on politics, media and the academy. A self-defined structuralist and feminist, Coşar grounded her work in both fact and theory.
She was also involved with Scholars at Risk, an international network that provides support for threatened academics around the world. From the relative safety of Turkey, she wanted to show solidarity for colleagues in authoritarian states.
Then, in January 2016, things suddenly got personal.
That was when Coşar joined 1,128 Turkish academics in signing a declaration, titled “We Will Not Be a Party to this Crime,” calling for the government to stop its attacks against minority Kurds. Soon more than 2,200 would sign.
The reaction to the declaration was swift, led by extreme nationalist groups with ties to the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. “There was a public campaign accusing the signatories of supporting terrorist activities,” Coşar recalled from her office at the Cornell Institute for European Studies(CIES).
“Just with a click, I was turned into a field of research myself,” she said. “It was what we had been talking about in the abstract turned into practice.”
Across Turkey, university administrators began firing faculty members after hasty hearings. “Some of my colleagues were not only being investigated by their universities, but they were being called to the criminal court,” she said. “In a country where war is not that unusual, where state violence is not that unusual, a call for peace is annoying for the authorities. So they attacked.”
Just with a click, I was turned into a field of research myself. It was what we had been talking about in the abstract turned into practice.
The crackdown took her by surprise. “At first it was just pure fear,” she said. “Fear of being arrested, fear of being dismissed, but mostly the unease of not being able to foresee what was going to happen. This lasted for about a month, or a month and a half, and then I got tired of it. It does not help, it paralyzes you, it consumes you. So I started to get involved in solidarity networks in Turkey. And I started to write.”
By that time, she was on sabbatical at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, working on a project about feminist academics in the United States. When her time at UMass was over, she thought about returning home, but opted to take a visiting professor position at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, where she taught until the end of last year.
She is not banned from traveling to Turkey – in fact, she was there in May to help care for a family member. She found the political situation dire, but she was heartened by signs of what she calls “the micropolitics of hope” – the fact that academics, political dissenters and other marginalized people have found ways to stay active despite the limitations placed on them.
But the uncertainty makes it hard for her to focus on her work there. “I was not able to write in my country,” she said. “It was not like someone stopped me from writing, but I couldn’t start.”
This winter, she came to Cornell as a visiting scholar with CIES, with support from the Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs, the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and the Institute of International Education’s Scholar Rescue Fund.
At Cornell, she said, the words have flowed.
“It has been amazing,” Coşar said. “I have been able to do the things that I wasn’t able to do for the last two and a half years. I completed manuscripts, I applied for research funds, I submitted a book proposal. The academic environment is so hospitable here. My colleagues are friendly and supportive and understanding. I cannot help but write, and the subjects that I am studying are right at the center of what is happening.”
That is exactly what CIES director Esra Akcan had hoped for. “Scholars with the courage to speak out against repressive regimes are increasingly under threat worldwide,” she said. “Cornell is well-positioned to provide a supportive community for these academics, and the space to continue their research, teaching and activism.”
Since 2004, the university has welcomed four researchers under the Scholar Rescue Fund program. Last year, CIES hosted Azat Gündoğan, a sociologist from Turkey who had also signed the so-called peace declaration.
Under Erdoğan, Turkey has become an international battleground for academic rights. Since 2016, an estimated 6,000 researchers, teachers and others have lost their jobs at Turkish universities because of their political views. Having experienced the crackdown firsthand, Coşar has been struck not just by the numbers, but by the emotional effects.
“You cannot be sure of yourself, how democratic you are, how egalitarian you are, until you are pushed into a situation where your principles are tested,” she said.
Coşar sometimes questions her own response. “After a year or so in North America, I still feel that divide in myself, asking whether I would rather be in my country, directly involved in the solidarity networks, rather than being abroad. But for now the balance is tipping toward staying away. Perhaps I’m being selfish.”
After a pause, she adds, “I’m always critical of myself, but my conscience is okay.”
It helps that she and her dog have found a place where they feel at home. “I love Ithaca,” she said with a smile. “There’s a sense of community here. And Cornell is a great place for academic production.”
Jonathan Miller is associate director for communications at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell University. This article was first published by the Cornell Chronicle.
Finding Asylum: Ithaca City of Asylum’s first short-term writer in residence
Short-term writer-in-residence for Ithaca City of Asylum Raad Rahman will lead lectures and public readings through May 9. She will present a seminar at Cornell’s South Asia Program on Monday, April 23 at 12:15 p.m. in G08 Uris Hall. During her residency she will work on a novel.
Read more about her work and mission in The Ithaca Times.
Raad Rahman, spring 2018 visiting writer with Ithaca City of Asylum
Dissident Bangladeshi writer visits Ithaca April 8-May 9
Raad Rahman, a journalist, novelist, essayist and human rights advocate from Bangladesh, will be in Ithaca from April 8 to May 9 as a writer-in-residence with Ithaca City of Asylum (ICOA). She will meet with Cornell students and faculty and present a seminar at the South Asia Program on April 23 at 12:15 p.m. in G08 Uris Hall.
Raad Rahman, spring 2018 visiting writer with Ithaca City of Asylum
Rahman has worked for media and human rights organizations in the United Kingdom, India, Jamaica, Hungary and the United States. She says she focuses her fiction and journalism on bringing repressed stories into the open. She has received death threats in Bangladesh for her writing on LGBT issues; fellow journalists there have been murdered.
“The situation in Bangladesh is dire for writers,” she said. “Muslims like me are under attack. I want to continue to tell our stories at a time when diverse voices regarding Islam and Muslim females are few and far between in mainstream media.”
Rahman’s writing has been published by The New York Times, The Paris Review, The Baffler, The Guardian, Guernica, VICE, The Rumpus, Roads and Kingdoms and UNICEF. Guernica nominated one of her essays for the 2017 Pushcart Prize.
She holds a bachelor’s degree from Bard College and a master’s degree from Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. She has received fellowships and grants from the Rory Peck Trust, the International Women’s Media Foundation, PEN America, Open Society Foundation, Bard College and Harvard’s Kennedy School and completed residencies with the OMI International Arts Center, Hedgebrook and Hypatia-in-the-Woods.
Ithaca City of Asylum, a not-for-profit project of the Center for Transformative Action, provides refuge in Ithaca for dissident writers and promotes freedom of expression. Founded in 2001, ICOA is one of two North American members of the International Cities of Refuge Network, a worldwide consortium. The project has hosted six writers for two-year residencies in Ithaca. Rahman is ICOA’s first short-term writer-in-residence.
Rahman will give two public readings. On April 11, she will be the featured writer at the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival’s literary showcase. Her reading from her work, “When the Politics Becomes Personal: Using Fiction and Nonfiction to Address Political Violations,” is at 6 p.m. at Ithaca College’s Handwerker Gallery. On May 6, she will read from her fiction as part of Ithaca’s Spring Writes Festival. Her presentation, “Love, Justice and Extremism in Bangladesh,” is at 2 p.m. at Buffalo Street Books, Ithaca.
Rahman plans to use her residency to work on her current project, a novel that tells the story of two teenagers pitted against each other after a high-profile terrorist attack, and to finish a book of essays.
The residency is made possible in part with funds from Cornell’s Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs. ICOA is also a community partner of the Kitchen Theatre Company, Ithaca College and the Tompkins County Public Library.
Ithaca Out Loud Performers & Audio
On September 27, 2017, Ithaca City of Asylum hosted “Ithaca Out Loud,” an evening of literature and theater at the Tompkins County Public Library. Six Ithaca actors brought the work of six Ithaca authors to life with dramatic readings. Enjoy the recordings!
Welcome
Saviana Stanescu & Camilla Schade
Raza Rumi & Greg Bostwick
Alison Lurie & Cynthia Henderson
Katharyn Howd Machan & Katie Spallone
Anthony DiRenzo & Godfrey Simmons
Diane Ackerman & Kate Klein
Ithaca Out Loud
Ithaca City of Asylum (ICOA) will celebrate literacy and freedom of expression and commemorate Banned Books Week 2017 with “Ithaca Out Loud,” an evening of literature and theater, on Wednesday, September 27 at 7:00 p.m. at the Tompkins County Public Library (TCPL), located at 101 E. Green Street in Ithaca, NY. The event is free and open to the public, and refreshments will follow.
ICOA, a not-for-profit project of the Center for Transformative Action, provides refuge in Ithaca for dissident writers and promotes freedom of expression and human rights. Founded in 2001, ICOA is a member—one of only two in North America —of the International Cities of Refuge Network, a worldwide consortium of cities of asylum. ICOA is also a community partner of TCPL.
An Ithaca version of the National Public Radio show “Selected Shorts,” the September 27 event will feature stories, poems, and drama by six of Ithaca’s most beloved authors read aloud and brought to life by six of the region’s most celebrated actors. Among the featured works is a story by Raza Rumi, ICOA’s emeritus writer-in-residence, a Pakistani journalist and policy analyst who has authored a memoir, Delhi by Heart, and a political history of Pakistan, A Fractious Path, both published by HarperCollins India. Rumi is currently teaching at Ithaca College and has taught recently in the Cornell University Institute of Public Affairs. He also serves as consulting editor of the Pakistan weekly The Friday Times and contributes to international media outlets, including the Huffington Post, New York Times, al Jazeera, and others. Since he arrived in Ithaca, he has participated in numerous local events, including Spring Writes and the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival.
Greg Bostwick, professor of acting at Ithaca College with more than 70 regional roles to his name, will perform a passage from Rumi’s memoir Delhi by Heart.
Also appearing in Ithaca Out Loud 2017 are:
Godfrey Simmons, artistic director of Civic Ensemble, performing a short story by Anthony Di Renzo, who teaches writing at Ithaca College.
Cynthia Henderson, professional actor and associate professor in Ithaca College’s Department of Theatre Arts, performing a folk tale by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alison Lurie.
Kate Klein, Actor’s Workshop of Ithaca graduate, performing a poem by Diane Ackerman, author of two dozen award-winning works of poetry and nonfiction including The Zookeeper’s Wife.
Camilla Schade, actor and teaching artist, performing “Don’t/Dream,” a monologue by playwright and scholar Saviana Stanescu, assistant professor in Ithaca College’s Department of Theatre Arts.
Katie Spallone, co-director of the Actor’s Workshop of Ithaca, performing a poem by Katharyn Howd Machan, author of 32 published collections and professor of writing at Ithaca College.
This event is made possible in part with funds from the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County.
New film on Ithaca City of Asylum
This short documentary was produced by Maureen Wietecha, ICOA’s spring 2017 intern. It provides an overview of ICOA work and features interviews with Raza Rumi, our current writer in residence, as well as three of our board members, Barbara Adams, David Guaspari, and Kate Klein.
Journalist Killings in Sri Lanka Predicated on a Deadly Irony
This article was originally published by Thalif Deen on IPS News as part of special IPS coverage of World Press Freedom Day. It features an interview with our previous writer in residence, Sonali Samarasinghe.
– The widespread belief in the politically-motivated killings of journalists in Sri Lanka is predicated on a deadly irony: the hidden hand has always been visible, but the fingerprints have gone missing.
Lasantha Wickrematunge, the Sri Lankan journalist killed in 2009. The two most widely publicized killings relate to IPS UN Bureau Chief in Colombo, Richard de Zoysa, 30, in February 1990, and the Editor-in-Chief of the Sunday Leader Lasantha Wickrematunge, 51, in January 2009.
But both murders remain unsolved—due primarily to political coverups — despite several leads pointing to the killers.
As fate would have it, the politician who apparently ordered the killing of de Zoysa, and the police officer who executed that order both died in a suicide bomb blast in 1993, three years after de Zoysa’s murder.
But the rest of the conspirators are still on the loose and fugitives from justice.
And as the United Nations commemorated World Press Freedom Day, there were reports last week that one of the suspects in the Wickrematunge killing– far from being investigated or prosecuted — had been elevated to the rank of a diplomat and posted to a Sri Lanka embassy in an Asian capital years ago.
The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalist (CPJ), which has an arresting headline on its website titled “Sri Lanka: Where Journalists are Killed with Impunity,” lists the killings of 25 Sri Lankan journalists since 1992, with 19 where “motives were confirmed” and six with “motives unconfirmed.”
David Kaye, the UN Special Rapporteur on ‘the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression’, called on governments “to investigate and hold accountable all those responsible for attacks on journalists.”
In a statement released May 2, he said: “This past year has seen repeated attacks on journalists, leaving many dead or injured. Often terrorist groups carry out such attacks to silence opposition, secularists or atheists.”
Too often, he pointed out, threats are not met with effective protection by law enforcement or, in their aftermath, genuine investigation and prosecution.
“States need to make accountability a priority,” he declared.
In an interview with IPS, Sonali Samarasinghe, Minister Counsellor at the Permanent Mission of Sri Lanka to the United Nations, confirmed that both high profile killings in Sri Lanka were meant to silence press criticism of political higher-ups.
Speaking strictly as a former journalist and widow of Lasantha Wickrematunge, she said “the authorities at the time wanted to silence Lasantha and cripple two newspapers — The Sunday Leader of which he was Editor-in-Chief and I was Consultant Editor– and The Morning Leader of which I was Editor in Chief.”
In Richard de Zoysa’s case, Samarasinghe said, he was the first Sri Lankan journalist to pay the ultimate price for his journalism.
Like Lasantha, Richard was beloved during his life, and like Lasantha, he has, since his death, become an icon in the media industry in Sri Lanka. Richard was a man of extraordinary talent and range who wrote haunting poetry and powerful plays, she noted.
There is no doubt in my mind that his killing was politically motivated as well, said Samarasinghe, a former Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, an Edward R. Murrow Fellow in Washington DC, and an International Journalist-in-Residence at the Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York.
Excerpts from the interview:
IPS: Since Lasantha’s killing, has there been any credible investigation to track down his killer or killers? Why has there been no trial or conviction for 8 long years?
SAMARASINGHE: Before January 2015, there had been virtually no serious investigation into this crime. There seems to have been a deliberate cover-up and stonewalling of the case. Such emblematic cases are not properly investigated for several reasons; among them, to hide the truth, to perpetuate a fear psychosis in the people and to create chaos. These assassinations affect not only the families of the victims but society as a whole. A break down in the rule of law and a lack of freedom of information leads to social divisiveness and generates mistrust between groups and in the institutions of the State. They send messages of fear, despondency and submission – and slavish/divisive societies are easier to manipulate.
However, since the change in administration in 2015, a special Criminal Investigations Team was established and there have been concrete steps taken not only in Lasantha’s case but in the cases of other journalists who were beaten, threatened or who disappeared during the previous administration. Lasantha’s body was exhumed late last year as part of this new investigation. These are extremely gut-wrenching circumstances and for me very difficult to endure as his wife. However, for the sake of the greater good and for the purposes of a thorough independent investigation, we have to go through this.
The proper conclusion of these investigations are important in order to re-establish Good Governance and the Rule of Law in our country, and halt the cyclical recurrence of violence in various forms. This is why the present administration has said it is deeply committed to these democratic principles.
IPS: How safe is the political environment for journalists now — as compared with 1990 or 2009?
SAMARASINGHE: As a nation that had suffered a dark period under the yoke of terrorism and an accompanying culture of impunity, this administration has demonstrated in several concrete ways that it is actively conscious of the value of a nation built on the principles of democracy and the Rule of Law. The cornerstone of any democracy is freedom of information. Without this there can be no meaningful advancement of peace, development or human rights. Among others, the proper handling of Lasantha’s case will become the symbol of a restored and renewed democracy where once again, the people of our country will have faith in our judiciary, and in our system of Justice. This is a slow and steady process.
Clearly the current administration has taken several steps in the right direction. For instance after years of civil society activism the Right to Information Act was signed into law in August 2016 and came into force on February 4, 2017. The government unanimously enacted the Assistance to and Protection of Victims of Crimes and Witnesses Act. A Permanent Office for Missing Persons (OMP) has been established. These are all structures and mechanisms that serve to rebuild trust in the state. I would say that today we have an administration that understands the value of an independent fourth estate and the serious perils of lapdog journalism.
QUESTION: With the increasing attacks on journalists worldwide, is there a role for the UN to stem this onslaught?
SAMARASINGHE: There is definitely a leadership role for the United Nations. From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – Article 19 which states that “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers,” to the unanimously adopted Sustainable Development Goals – particularly Goal 16, to “Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels” we see that member states fully realize the UN’s critical role in this regard.
Target 10 of Goal 16 recognizes that public access to information and fundamental freedoms are indispensable conditions to sustainable development. It reads, “Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements.”
IPS: Are most UN member states paying only lip service to the cause of press freedom?
SAMARASINGHE: In the final analysis, it is the responsibility of individual member states to implement nationally the international agreements and UN resolutions in accordance with their own domestic laws and cultures and to establish Rule of Law and end impunity. The two indicators set by the United Nations Statistical Commission for tracking progress in the achievement of target 10 are pertinent as they relate (a) to the number of verified cases of killing, kidnapping, enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention and torture of journalists, associated media personnel, trade unionists and human rights advocates, and (b) to the number of countries that adopt and implement constitutional, statutory and/or policy guarantees for public access to information. Therefore SDG 16 is significant in mainstreaming safety of journalists in the international development agenda and for tracking progress in individual countries.
IPS: Do you think the UN should at least name and shame these countries where journalists are constantly in danger of losing their lives in the line of duty?
SAMARASINGHE: There is in fact a UN plan of action for the safety of journalists and the issue of impunity, with UNESCO taking the lead in developing and implementing the plan. This plan includes a number of actions including standard-setting, policy-making, monitoring, reporting, building capacity and awareness-raising.
And yet, according to the UN itself every five days a journalist is killed in pursuit of a story. So yes, clearly the international community must be more proactive in addressing this issue. The numbers from civil society are staggering as well, with the Committee to Protect Journalists reporting that some 370 journalists were murdered between 2004 and 2013 in direct retaliation for their work, with 48 journalists killed in 2016 and 8 already killed in 2017.
However there are several soft approaches that the UN already explores, and awareness-raising through commemorative events or International Days (including World Press Freedom Day) is one. These soft approaches, if constant, can be very effective in shining a light on national situations, transporting incidents to the international stage and affording activists and family members an international platform to make their case.
IPS: Is there any role for journalists themselves to take up the fight at home or, more importantly, internationally?
One way to do this is to highlight or give prominence to the journalists who have been victimized in their own countries. For example, as an exiled journalist at the time, I was invited to speak at international events organized by UN agencies. During this period, I was also given the opportunity to speak at various other international venues, including on Capitol Hill, at the National Press Club, Universities and was also invited to serve as key note speaker at special events, including to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr Day. This kind of exposure helps keep the issues alive on the international stage.
Furthermore, UNESCO has the annual UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize awarded on 3 May that honors a person, organization or institution that has made an outstanding contribution to the promotion of press freedom. Lasantha was awarded this prize in 2009. He became only the second journalist to be honoured posthumously since this prize was created, and a testimony to the risk many journalists run in the pursuit of their calling. Again, this award, and the buzz it created, became a megaphone opportunity to highlight not only Lasantha’s case, but also the plight of all journalists persecuted everywhere for their work.
And in 2009 Mr Ban Ki Moon the then UN Secretary General highlighted Lasantha’s assassination during his remarks on Press Freedom Day. The world’s top diplomat giving prominence to Lasantha’s case was an important step in the right direction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SNVeGGe0TU. Other UN agencies and diplomats expressed concern as well quite publicly, and these statements sent a message that the international community was watching. But yes, given the horrific numbers, it is important that the international community remains ever vigilant.
Ithaca City of Asylum to Read at Spring Writes Festival
The public is cordially invited to a reading by five writers who are active on the board of Ithaca City of Asylum. The authors will give short readings from their own poetry and prose as part of the Spring Writes Literary Festival.
“Ithaca City of Asylum is a literary-minded group,” said board member Edward Hower. “The organization supports writers from abroad, many board members themselves are published writers, and we have fun.”
The lineup:
Katherine Anderson
Brenna Fitzgerald
David Guaspari
Edward Hower
Gail Lillian Holst-Warhaft
The event will take place on Sunday, May 7, from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m., at Buffalo Street Books.
‘The Zookeeper’s Wife’ is a testament to courage
This article, written by board member Barbara Adams, was originally published in The Ithaca Times. Read it on Ithaca.com
One little-known story of opposition to Nazism is that of a young Polish zookeeper and his wife, who saved the lives of more than 300 Jews. During the German occupation of Warsaw, zoo director Jan Żabiński, an officer in the Resistance, regularly risked his life in ways he couldn’t even share with his wife. Antonina kept the household and zoo running, protected their son Ryś and infant daughter, and personally cared for the many Jews who passed through their shelter on the way to safe houses both in and outside the city.
Antonina’s story is strikingly recounted in The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story, a nonfiction work by Ithaca-based essayist, poet, and naturalist Diane Ackerman. Published in 2007, the book was on the New York Times best-seller list for a year. In 2008, it earned the Orion Award for its originality in exploring the human relationship to nature –– showing that “a book can be at the same time a work of art, an act of conscientious objection to the destruction of the world, and an affirmation of hope and human decency.”
The book was soon optioned for a film, which took eight years to be realized. Significantly, the Focus Features film set a record for women crew members (around 20%) –– with a woman director (Niki Caro), three women producers, screenwriter (Angela Workman), author (Ackerman), camera operator, stunt coordinator, and designer.
Jessica Chastain, who plays Antonina, wrote from the set about working with so many women: “It’s been a very collaborative experience, and it’s been heaven for me…. We know how rare making this kind of film is. We’re giddy with happiness.”
The Zookeeper’s Wife opens this week nationally and in Ithaca on Friday at Cinemapolis, where the 4:15 p.m. screening will be followed by a talkback and book signing with Ackerman. The film has already had special viewings worldwide, including at the U.S. Holocaust Museum and the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam.
The Ithaca Times spoke recently with Diane Ackerman about the book and the film.
Ithaca Times: How did you discover this story?
Diane Ackerman: I was traveling around the world researching endangered animals, when I heard that there were ancient horses running around a primeval forest in Poland. I really wanted to see them. Both my parents had come from Poland before the war, and my grandfather had told me that the countryside, the old forests, were very beautiful. I was writing for National Geographic and proposed a piece on the Przywalski horses, but they sent me to the South Pacific instead. But in 2005 I went to Poland.
IT: You did massive research for the book –– what was your process?
DA: I wrote the book in layers, both researching and writing. As narrative nonfiction, it needed to read like a novel with the usual fictional devices of plot and character, but I couldn’t make anything up. How do you do that if you weren’t alive at the time and events took place in an unfamiliar culture? It’s possible to learn an enormous amount about the history, the culture, the natural history, and the personal lives relevant to the book.
For example, I knew Antonina and her son were hiding in a lampshade store at one point. She doesn’t describe the store in her diary, but I could find out what Baltic lampshades of the era looked like. And it’s possible to learn the navigation patterns of birds over Warsaw in 1939 –– so I knew what she saw when she looked up.
Warsaw was nearly leveled during the war, but its old town has been entirely rebuilt, a replica based on Renaissance architectural drawings. And when I actually went there, the zoo’s villa still stands. So I could stand on Antonina’s balcony and see what she saw and have the same sensory experience, could see the linden trees, the dew on the tiles. The hollow wooden staircase still sounds like a musical instrument when you walk on it. Many of the same animals are at the zoo today, and you can find out what they smell like, what order they call in in the morning. I also visited the underground museum and the sites where things happened. And I interviewed Ryś, who still lives in Warsaw.
IT: You were originally pursuing information about the horses when you happened onto Antonina’s diary?
DA: Yes, an Ithaca friend had a Polish friend whose uncle had been a vet at the zoo. He remembered that the zookeeper’s wife had kept a diary, which he sent and the Polish woman translated. I was thunderstruck by the splendor of Antonina’s sensibility, her almost mystical relationship with animals. She treated them with enormous care and respect, and as a result they trusted her. She was a kind of animal whisperer, adopting orphan animals from the forest and raising them in the villa. It was from her diary I learned she was sheltering Jews from the ghetto –– she and her husband were so disgusted by Nazi racism that they decided they had to do something about it.
They began hiding people after the bombing of the zoo in 1939 –– in the backs of cages were rooms, and the pheasant house was enclosed. They were all connected by a ribbed underground tunnel from the lions’ house. Everyone they sheltered passed through there. And they also hid “guests” in the house –– in the basement, between the upstairs walls, in the attic, in cupboards.
Interestingly, all accounts of rescuers in Poland said the same thing: “I wasn’t really a hero; anyone in my situation would have done the same thing –– it was the right thing to do.”
IT: What aspects of your book does the film reflect well?
DA: The film is very good about the relationship between the different characters, which has a lot to do with the nuanced responses of the actors. For me, that brought a richness to the story.It’s also excellent on the Żabińskis’ relationship with the animals. And Jan’s going in and out of the ghetto is very powerful in the film.
IT: Antonina’s relationship with Berlin zookeeper Lutz Heck goes much further than in the book.
DA: Yes, but I read his autobiography and it’s clear he was sweet on her. But I didn’t have enough evidence at the time to include that. I felt the film handled it well, and Antonina’s daughter Teresa was fine with it too.
IT: Your book provided a strong picture of the underground –– the varied and complex levels of resistance –– and the incredible uncertainty of every moment.
DA: That context –– also history and the way daily life is registered –– is covered better in the book, whereas the film concentrates on characters. Though for a more elaborate sense of the characters’ internal lives, you have to read the book.
IT: Any negative aspects of the Żabińskis’ relationship that you didn’t show? Jan’s masculinist values certainly come through…
DA: I was really candid in the book about the parts of their relationship that might have been difficult. Partly that has to do with the role of women in Poland’s culture at the time. For context, I read a great deal written by women in that era and spoke with two women in their 80s who’d been Resistance bicycle messengers. I cared a lot about showing the Żabińskis as multifaceted personalities –– nobody is perfect –– and their children are fine with this.
IT: As a naturalist and poet you seem to have a personal connection with Antonina, her instinctiveness.
DA: Yes, I discovered that by reading her children’s books, in which she becomes other animals, and in her diary on daily life in the zoo. She was attuned to the textures of everyday life in a way that’s very familiar to me. I identified with her kinship with animals, how intimately woven into the seasons and nature she was. And the movie captures that quality –– from the very opening you see her genuine love of animals, which for her exists on a continuum that includes humans.
Antonina herself was an orphan; her parents had been murdered early in the Russian Revolution. She grew up as orphans often do, needing to pay attention to the behaviors of the people around her. Her gift, her sensitivity, made it possible for her to handle the Nazis who stopped by the zoo –– she was able to read them in the same way she could read animals.
IT: What was the adaptation process like for you?
DA: I chose not to be involved writing the screenplay; that’s not my area of expertise. But I spoke with the writer and producers at enormous length. And they showed me the script to make sure I was happy with it. My job was to make sure that the filmmakers could be trusted with the story because the Żabiński children were still alive. Teresa loves the film; she even appears in an early scene. My first response to reading the script was “this is so cinematic!” I spent four days on set in Prague and was amazed at how one art form gets translated into another.
This was very much a woman’s film, and we all came to it because we were attracted to Antonina’s story –– a story of good coming out of evil, a story of different forms of heroism. As head of an underground unit that blew up trains, Jan was heroic in the traditional way. But Antonina risked her life every day; she was in constant danger. Yet she made sure the people in her care survived the war with their humanity intact, that they were able to continue leading their lives despite the trauma. She understood that if you keep the physical body alive, but the spirit dies, how do you go on living your life?
Ordinary people can rise to extraordinary acts of mercy and heroism. Antonina was performing radical acts of compassion –– something that happens every day on our war-torn planet, but we don’t hear about it very often. It’s especially the form that women perform.
IT: Seventy years later, this story still has intense relevance today.
DA: Unfortunately, these are still days of genocide that we live in. The refugee crisis continues, and we see a resurgence of racism and prejudice in our own country. Today’s political climate has caused so many people to compare it to the early days of Nazi Germany. I think this story offers a message about the need for tolerance –– about what can happen if we’re not vigilant about free speech and human rights, about our interconnectedness. •
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