The Polish people start to realize that surrendering to Germany and Adolf Hitler was a bad idea. The zoo is bombed and the surviving animals are sent off to another zoo. This devastates Antonina and Jan because the zoo and it's animals are their life. Jews are soon sent off to concentration camps and mass killings start. Hitler wants to purify the human race by killing off people that don't have the right features. Jan grew up in a Jewish school so he is good friends with many Jews. The underground housing of Jews is in desperate need of space. The zoo is perfect for this, because of the lack of animals the Zabinski's have a lot of extra space. Housing Jewish people is very risky, at times the Zabinski's would have 300 people hiding in the zoo until they get the right documents for them to live somewhere else. One suspicious footstep could lead to an immediate death to everyone living in the zoo. This puts the Zabinski's and everyone living in the empty animal cages in grave danger. Adolf Hitler commands the Nazis to kill every Jew they see. This is proof that when people get in a killing mood they can become savage. Hitler will do anything do get what he wants. It was hard for people to know who to trust and who not to trust. Heck, a zoo owner himself was interested in rescuing many of the Zabinski's animals. He repeatedly swore to the Zabinskis that he would take care of their animals, Antonina and Jan weren't convinced"(94). Antonina suspected he was lying, that he wielded enormous influence with higher-ups, and he might even be personally responsible for their fate"(93). Heck assured them that he had nothing to do with the closing of their zoo but no one can be fully trusted in times of war. Mostly people working for Adolf Hitler. Antonina writes in her journal, "We knew that Heck was a liar and with great sadness we understood that now there was no hope for saving our zoo;Germans were not interested in keeping them alive." Germans didn't care who lived and who died, as long as they got done what needed to be done according to them.
When one's life is in danger, they will go to extremes to survive. Killing became a sort of game to the Germans. One day Heck and his friends arrived drunk and armed to the zoo, "suddenly gunshots broke the winter silence, each one followed by its echo, as rifle fire crackled across the grounds, loud enough to hear through shuttered windows." Heck and his friends killed many of the zoo animals only for their own pleasure. Antonina and Jan valued the lives of their animals, on the other hand the Germans put very little value on life. The Germans increase in killing for fun worried everyone in danger. Antonina wrote in her journal, "Beyond politics or war, of sheer gratuitous slaughter, the savagery didn't serve hunger or necessity, it wasn't a political gambit, the doomed animals weren't being culled because they'd become too abundant in the wild... the brief frisson of killing outweighed the animals' lives. How many humans will die like this in the coming months"(96)? It was easy for the Germans to go around killing aimlessly for the fun of it. They were in power so they could do whatever they wanted. Another time the book demonstrates a time when the Germans portrayed death as a joke. One day a couple of Germans showed up at the zoo and implied that they were planning on killing Antonina and her two kids. Antonina used her best German and pleaded,"Calm down! Calm down" The Germans laughed and kept their guns aimed in her direction. They ordered Rys to walk around to the back of the shed and one of the Nazis followed him with a gun. "Antonina saw her son's face shriek with fear, the blood drain out of it, and his lips turn a light purple. She couldn't move and risk their killing her and Teresa, too"(280). She heard a gunshot come from the back of the shed. Then the man shouted, "Hey , boys! bring me that rooster! Get him from the bushes"(280). Rys then walked out from behind the shed, shaking with fear holding a dead chicken. The German soldier exclaimed, "We've played such a funny joke"(280)! The Germans faked that they had killed the young boy, and laughed about it. This shows that the Germans take death as a joke. They then ran away laughing. Antonina had been sure the gunshots had killed her son and was horrified to find it was just an evil prank. Many Germans took life as just a joke.
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It's scary to believe that someone can become so emotionless and savage-like that they kill ANIMALS because there in the way, its terrible. Then comes the worst part that everyone remembers. Hitler saying that "purifying" the world by killing people who were jewish is ridiculous. He had no right to do what he was doing and it's a terrible experience to even read about, its just mind blowing how many people were killed/died because of him. The part that always haunts me is the fact he killed kids, it's depressing. This is an intense and depressing for sure.
This was very surprising for me to read. I had never heard this much about the Germans actions before. It seems as if their savage killings were done to instill even more fear in the people. This shows that the Germans must have been insecure about how much the people really feared them.
The fact that the Germans soldiers pretended to kill this person's son but instead just played a joke really shows their savage nature. It seems as though they didn't particularly believe in Hitler's ideals, but instead were just using it as an excuse to kill and terrorize other people. They just wanted a convenient excuse, and Hitler gave it to them, which allowed the soldiers to indulge in their horrible behavior.
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