Another wartime zoo book, you wait for years then two turn up (like British buses) in 2025 …
Admittedly this was published in 2018, I didn’t find a copy at the time then my wartime zoo keepers’ garden allotment project finished (World War Zoo gardens 2009-2019) followed by Covid lockdown 2020 etc.
I was delighted when this book arrived on my desk at work as a Secret Santa (thanks Team!).
I had lost contact with the Dutch author Kevin Prenger, although I had an email conversation sometime between 2009 and 2018 with the author when he was researching this book. He also asked about using anything on this my wartime zoo research blog. Kevin was also keen to use the bombed Berlin Zoo elephant house obscure press archive photo that I have in my collection.
Book blurb: May 1945. The war in Europe has come to an end. Bombardments by the Allies and house-to-house combat between the German Wehrmacht and the Russian Red Army have turned the city into a pile of rubble. The impressive 19th century zoo next to Tiergarten Park has also suffered heavily from the violence of war. Many stray bombs came down on the premises. During the battle of Berlin, the zoo turned into a battlefield as tanks and shells left their destructive traces. The premises of the zoo, once so well-attended, has deteriorated to a gruesome cratered landscape. Dead soldiers and carcasses of animals lie scattered everywhere. Less than 100 of the approximately 3,500 animals have survived.
War Zone Zoo tells the gripping tale of the Berlin Zoo, its employees and its animals in wartime. Its history and restoration also pass review.
This book tells the story of “how violence and dictatorship made the Berlin Zoo lose its innocence, but it is also a story about love for animals, human powers of survival and the rebirth of the historic and public icon the Berlin Zoo still is today.”
Author Bio: Kevin Prenger is a writer of World War II history, living in his native Netherlands. He is the chief editor of the website TracesOfWar.com and also contributes to the Dutch online history magazine Historiek.net. His previous works include ‘War Zone Zoo’ (aboit the history of the Berlin zoo during World War II) and ‘Christmas under Fire, 1944’. ‘A Judge in Auschwitz’, previously published in Dutch and Polish, is his third book translated in English.
I and the World War Zoo gardens project / Newquay Zoo are acknowledged in the Thanks page at the back of the book, along with my wartime Berlin Zoo elephant house photo inside the book.
Pictured below: The last elephant left at the damaged Elephant house Berlin Zoo in 1943/44 after the Allied Air raids (Image source: Mark Norris, private collection from defunct press archive.)
Only 91 animals remained amongst the ruins of wartime Berlin Zoo by 1945 from an old German / US archive press photo (World War Zoo gardens collection at Newquay Zoo)
As we approach another winter in Europe, EAZA (the European Zoo and Aquarium Association) have posted a reminder about their EAZA Emergency Fund for maintaining and rebuilding Ukrainian zoos.
Newquay Zoo 2022
“As we approach the end of 2025, we want to thank all EAZA Members, colleagues and partners for your dedication throughout a busy and impactful year. The resilience and solidarity within our network have been especially evident in the continued support for Ukrainian zoos and aquariums. Yet, the arrival of another wartime winter has again made the need for assistance more urgent.
The EAZA Ukraine Zoos Emergency Fund remains a crucial lifeline, and we therefore renew our call for donations to ensure essential supplies and animal care can continue without interruption. Find out how to donate, and how funds have been spent, here: www.eaza.net/emergency-fund.
Thank you for everything you have contributed to the community in 2025. We wish you a peaceful holiday season and a hopeful, successful start to 2026.”
Personal and institutional donations are still welcome – individual donations can be by Paypal, online etc.
This is the book that I wish I had been able to read back in 2009 when I started research for our World War Zoo Gardens research blog and wartime allotment recreation at Newquay Zoo.
During my research I had several email chats with John Kinder and he was kind enough to acknowledge our project, blog postsw and our research in the book’s notes, footnotes and acknowledgment section.
John M. Kinder is a Professor of History at Oklahoma State University, where he is director of the American Studies Program. He is the author of “Paying with Their Bodies: American War and the Problem of the Disabled Veteran” and “World War Zoos: Humans and Other Animals in the Deadliest Conflict of the Modern Era.” He co-edited “Service Denied: Marginalized Veterans in Modern American History” and “‘They Are Dead and Yet They Live’: Civil War Memory in a Polarized America” in 2025/2026.
The blurb or book description on Amazon reads thus: A new and heartbreaking history of World War II as told through the shocking experiences of zoos across the globe.
“As Europe lurched into war in 1939, zookeepers started killing their animals. On September 1, as German forces invaded Poland, Warsaw began with its reptiles. Two days later, workers at the London Zoo launched a similar spree, dispatching six alligators, seven iguanas, sixteen southern anacondas, six Indian fruit bats, a fishing cat, a binturong, a Siberian tiger, five magpies, an Alexandrine parakeet, two bullfrogs, three lion cubs, a cheetah, four wolves, and a manatee over the next few months. Zoos worldwide did the same. The reasons were many, but the pattern was clear: The war that was about to kill so many people started by killing so many animals. Why? And how did zoos, nevertheless, not just survive the war but play a key role in how people did, too?”
“A harrowing yet surprisingly uplifting chronicle, Kinder’s World War Zoos traces how zoos survived the deadliest decades of global history, from the Great Depression, through the terrors of World War II, to the dawn of the Cold War. More than anything before or since, World War II represented an existential threat to the world’s zoological institutions. Some zoos were bombed; others bore the indignities of foreign occupation. Even zoos that were spared had to wrestle with questions rarely asked in public: What should they do when supplies ran low? Which animals should be killed to protect the lives of others? And how could zoos justify keeping dangerous animals that might escape and run wild during an aerial attack?”
“Zoos in wartime reveal the shared vulnerabilities of humans and animals during periods of social unrest and environmental peril. World War II-era zoos offered people ways to think about and grapple with imprisonment, powerlessness, and degradation. Viewed today, the story of zoos during World War II can be read as an allegory of twenty-first-century crises, as the effects of climate change threaten all life across the planet. A one-of-a-kind history, World War Zoos is the story of how the world’s zoos survived the deadliest conflict of the twentieth century–and what was lost along the way.” (Amazon blurb)
This book is well worth reading but with challenging content about how zoos, their staff, visitors and animals survived or perished.
The Holocaust chapters remind me strongly of Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime by Kenneth Helphand.
I shall write a more lengthy review of World War Zoos in the coming weeks but I thought as we enter November the Armistice and Remembrance month, it is worth reflecting on the service and sacrifice of many zoo staff, visitors and animals in wartime which differed greatly across different nations and countries.
Remembered.
Blog post by Mark Norris, November 2025, World War Zoo Gardens research project phase 1: 2009 to 2019, and ongoing.
During our World War Zoo garden project research, we came across photos in the Bristol Zoo press archive of what looked like a ‘Dig For Victory’ garden or Grow Your Own allotment to feed the zoo staff and zoo animals.
The ‘mystery garden’ supplying Bristol Zoo Gardens, as pictured in The Bristol Post Jan 1946 (Source: Bristol Zoo gardens archive / Bristol Post)
Wild Place project Facebook 2014 photos Sanctuary Garden wartime shelters, covered in edible nasturtiums! Photo: Alan Ashby 68 years later in 2014, the other side of the garden wall today, Wild Place, Bristol, 2014 (Picture: Alan Ashby)
It was later identified by Alan Ashby as the is taking shape:
Shelter Door 2025. Image Source: MSN / Bristol Zoo Project
The new British Rainforest Garden (based on a Chelsea Flower Shoe exhibit) “sits above an underground bunker, which was used during air raids in World War Two by the staff of the White family, who previously owned the site”.
Image Source: MSN / Bristol Zoo Project 2025
The British Rainforest Garden, designed by Zoe Claymore, won a RHS People’s Choice Award at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2025, and has moved to a permanent home at the Bristol Zoo Project at Cribbs Causeway. https://bristolzoo.org.uk/
Sir Lionel Earle, K.C.B., K.C.V.O., C.M.G., Secretary of H.M. Office of Works, yesterday afternoon unveiled a memorial tablet to the twenty members of the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens staff who gave their lives, in the Great War. The tablet is in the entrance hall of the laboratory.
About a hundred relatives and members of the staff were present. Sir Lionel Earle said the memorial served a double purpose.
Firstly, it was a lasting testimony to the members of the staff who sacrificed their lives for the great cause; and, secondly, it was a memorial to Sir Isaac Bayley-Balfour, late botanist, administrator, and agriculturist, who did so much for the Botanic Gardens.
It had been Sir Isaac’s last wish that a memorial to these men be placed in the entrance hall. The Rev. E. C. Houlston, B.D., officiated at the service, which concluded with the sounding of the “Last Post.”
Blogposted as part of the WW1 centenary anniversary
2014 – Busy spreading seeds in RBGE’s poppy field to commemorate WW1 are (L-R) army veterans, Donald Mcleod, Scots Guards, and Colin Richards, Queens Own Highlanders, along with RBGE horticulturists Paul Hughes and Scott Ainslie. #WW1Centenary (RBGE Facebook photo 21 May 2014)
This year also sees the 80th anniversary of VE Day in May 2025 and August 2025 – RBGE also hase an additional plaque for its staff who served 1939-1945
Well done to RBGE for maintaining this Archive website / RBGE blogsite and its many plant and human stories.
RBGE staff from two World Wars – Remembered.
Blogposted in 22 July 2025 (although written and scheduled back in 2017) by Mark Norris as part of the World War Zoo Gardens blog project, Newquay Zoo (2009-2019). This WWZG project still exists for ongoing research and as this a legacy research blog, whilst the active side of the recreated zoo keeper’s allotment at the zoo and related curriculum workshops has now been stood down and grassed over! Poppies, herb and veg keep coming back …
It is now 80 years since the celebration of VE Day 8th May 1945 / 2025, although troops were still fighting in the Far East until VJ Day in August 1945.
Our Wartime Zoo Keepers’ Garden recreation at Newquay Zoo c. 2017
Ten years ago on VE Day 70 May the 8th 2015 our small WW2 Wartime Zoo Keeper’s Garden project (2009-2019) was in full flow, producing fresh food and herbs for our animals.
This area now has now been left fallow, grassed over as the area was due to have been redeveloped but that patch of lawn is still sprouting yellow poppies, leeks, garlic and useful herbs!
VE Day 75 events largely did not happen as it came amidst the 2020 Covid Lockdown – Keep Safe, Stay Home, Save Lives – and the garden was fallow for the next year or so. Nice Churchill’s favourite fruity tea cake recipe though!
Part of our World War Zoo Gardens display was placed temporarily online for schools and home education use during the pandemic. (Note: no longer online).
Much of the surplus project materials and bulky artefacts, since the main project ended in 2019, have been passed on to various archives and museums including Bodmin Military Museum for their WW2 education work.
Our wartime zoo garden project extended to studying the stories behind the few surviving zoo and botanic garden war memorials including from WW1 during WW100 or the WW1 Centenary (2014-2019). The ceramic poppy display for WW1 is being redisplayed to mark VE Day 80.
Tower Poppies 2014 as part WW100 for WW1 centenary (Author’s photo)
Remembering the zoo staff and botanic gardens staff who served in WW2, and especially those who did not return.
ZSL Staff war memorial WW1 WW2, London Zoo
For example, from ZSL London Zoo and Whipsnade
Zoological Society of London
In memory of employees killed by enemy action during the war 1939-45
Regent’s Park
Davies. Henry Peris (Lieutenant RA) ZSL Clerk: Killed in action Far East 21.12.1941 164971, Royal Artillery, 5th Field Regt, died aged 27. Listed on the Singapore memorial.
Leney. William Walter Thomas ZSL Overseer: Killed by flying bomb 25.11.1944
Peachey. Leonard James (Sergeant RAF) ZSL Clerk: Killed in air crash Lincs 18.12.1940
Wells. Albert Henry (Gunner RA) ZSL Keeper: Killed in action, Burma 25.01.1945 Gunner 1755068, Royal Artillery, 70 H.A.A Regiment
Whipsnade Park
Adams. Percy Murray (Gunner RA) ZSL Keeper: Died in Japan POW 28.07.1943 Gunner 922398, Royal Artillery, 148 (Bedfordhsire Yeomanry) Field Regt, died aged 26.
Remembered still each year by the laying of poppy wreaths at the staff war memorial on Armistice Sunday.
More about each ZSL man from WW1 and WW2 can be found on this blog on relevant blogposts.
London Zoo was not the only zoo in Britain to be affected by wartime bombing and loss of serving staff. Chester Zoo for example lost its aquarist Peter Falwasser.
Tucked away on my desk (which houses part of the Newquay Zoo archive) is a small pin-badge in blue and yellow with a sunflower and the words ‘Ukraine’, a small reminder that wartime zoos still exist today whilst we countdown to the 80th anniversary of VE and VJ Day in WW2 later this year.
Hard to believe that today 24th February 2025, it is now three years on from the Russian invasion of the Ukraine in February 2022.
BIAZA and EAZA European zoos set aside funding and undertook fundraising for the future rebuilding of Ukrainian zoos and the preservation of its animals and staff.
Fundraising weekend poster, Newquay Zoo March 2022
Image: Ex-Paignton Zoo Rhino sculpture in new blue and yellow colours and sunflower design on display at the entrance of Newquay Zoo on its Ukraine fundraising weekend March 2022 and throughout 2022.
News of how zoos in the frontline areas were affected and how those further back in the Ukraine were affected by aerial and drone attack trickled out over the first few days through websites and social media as seen in our February blogpost in 2022:
EAZA Emergency fund website text, 24 February 2025: text copied for research purposes *
“Since the beginning of the Russian invasion in 2022, EAZA has been coordinating an Emergency Fund for zoos and aquariums, assisting individual Members with their own fundraising efforts, and working with the Association of Zoos of Ukraine (AZU, formally known as UAZA) to ensure that our Ukrainian colleagues receive the assistance they need when it is best able to support them.
“On behalf of the recipients of your donations, EAZA would like to thank all the individuals who have made 11,790 donations so far, as well as the 221 EAZA Members and other organisations worldwide, for your extraordinary generosity.”
Thanks to you we have collected €2,032,601.49 as of 8 January 2025! – Myfanwy Griffith, EAZA Executive Director
“With no end to the war in sight, we continue to raise funds and provide support to those in need. Please consider joining the efforts to care for zoo animals in Ukraine and donate to the EAZA Emergency Fund for Ukraine Zoos … EAZA commits to full transparency on the collection and distribution of funds for Ukraine: 100% of your donation will go to help Ukrainian zoos …” (EAZA website accessed 24 February 2025)
“The Ukraine Zoos Emergency Fund is administered according to a strict protocol with a comprehensive list of claimable items. Funds raised are being used to assist Ukrainian zoos to continue to provide food and care to animals in conditions of relative welfare and safety, as well as providing support for care staff and management at the zoos.
We have direct contact with our Candidates for Membership Mykolayiv Zoo, Kharkiv Zoo and Kyiv Zoo, and indirect contact with other zoos via the Association of Zoos of Ukraine (AZU) and the contacts of our Members. Funds are being allocated on the basis of need according to the requests we receive from zoos, and are distributed to recipients through channels subject to reasonable due diligence …”
Now renamed the Association of Zoos of Ukraine (AZU), here in the old 2022 logo (formally known as UAZA)
Let us hope that the zoos and the world are at peace again by the fourth anniversary in February 2026.
Please note: The World War Zoo Gardens project research blog about zoo history and zoo archives is both politically and religiously neutral, so does not enter into correspondence, accept or automatically post comments on political and religious topics.
As Catherine De Courcy quoted in her history of Dublin Zoo, the Zoo being originally an Anglo-Irish project of 1830s Imperial Britain onwards, throughout the upheavals of the Easter Rising during WW1 and the post-war independence period, Dublin Zoo was spared destruction as it was seen as neutral: “A Place of Peaceful Resort” for all. (Chapter 4, p. 119, 2009 edition).
* Blog posted on 24 February 2025 by Mark Norris, Newquay Zoo Education Department as a legacy blog / ongoing research from our World War Zoo gardens (Newquay Zoo 2009-2019)
Today 27th January is Holocaust Memorial Day – the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz being liberated in 1945. There are now only a frail handful of survivors left with the burden of their terrible memories to share witness, even less who can make the journey to this site.
The Holocaust is usually a topic that I (have the liberty to) avoid if possible when reading history books.
Some of the saddest and sobering chapters of Kenneth Helphand’s book Defiant Gardens were about those gardens planted for food, flowers and the blind hope of survival in the grounds of ghettoes and prison camps in World War Two. It proved to me the very strong urge people have to plant and watch things grow, even if they know they might not get to see them flourish.
Planting a tree or a seed is still a defiant act of faith in the future.
If you haven’t read the book, you can read more at Kenneth Helphands’ Defiant Gardens website: http://defiantgardens.com/
Back in 2014-18 during the World War Zoo Gardens project extending into the WW1 centenary, when I was researching how zoos, botanic gardens and naturalists survived WW1, I was contacted by one of the centenary events companies, the Big Ideas Company with whom I had project links to local Newquay and Cornish people involved in WW1. Big Ideas were also planning to mark Holocaust Memorial Day events with painted pebbles by local communities and venues. I think our friends at Falmouth Art Gallery were involved, Cornwall and Falmouth having both a Jewish cemetery and many family and business connections.
These stones reflected the Jewish ritual habit of marking a cemetery visit by leaving a remembrance pebble on a headstone in lieu of flowers. I declined the Zoo taking part at the time as the Holocaust is a difficult and sensitive topic to tackle within the fun ‘family day out’ framework of conservation education at the zoo and I couldn’t really see a connection to my wartime zoo gardens project at the time.
Maybe I wasn’t thinking hard enough …
In the Holocaust archives worldwide are simple family snaps of a Jewish family enjoying ‘a day out at the zoo’. Notes about the accompanying family photographs record the steady destruction of the family throughout the war years.
These fortunate individuals Zoo Director Hans Honigmann, wildlife sound recordist Ludwig Koch and photographer Wolfgang Suschitsky who found refuge at Dudley Zoo and London Zoo, thus escaping the Holocaust:
One of the refugees from Nazi Germany was a young Judith Kerr, children’s writer of When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, Mog and The Tiger Who Came To Tea. Kerr relates a story about her “Uncle Julius” in When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, who lost his job and access to the local zoo in Germany because of his Jewish ancestry. He committed suicide to escape the fate of many Jews.
Another young Kindertransport refugee girl went on to become a keeper at our sister zoo Paignton Zoo the late Trudy Hills / Smith, who then married its Superintendent Ken Smith in the 1950s before running small zoos together across the West Country.
My longstanding zoo colleagues at Newquay Zoo John Meek and our retired former Director Stewart Muir (formerly of Shaldon Zoo) introduced me to the late Trudy Smith and her family when she visited Newquay Zoo. Trudy donated to us a cache of black and white animal photos from Exmouth and Paignton Zoos which are now part of the Paignton Zoo Archive.
Image source of Gerald Durrell and Trudi Hills / Smith: Paignton Zoo Archive
After leaving Herbert Whitley’s Paignton Zoo to help set up Gerald Durrell’s young Jersey Zoo in 1959, three years later in 1962, “Ken and his family would return to the South West and take over the lease for Exmouth Zoo, which Paignton had decided to sell. Over the next few years, Ken’s ‘zoo empire’ would expand to encompass four animal collections in the region. In 1963, he opened Poole Park Zoo in Dorset, followed by Teignmouth Children’s Zoo and then … [ran or managed Charles Trevisick’s tiny] Newquay Children’s Zoo in 1967. Of these four zoos, only one is still open, although it’s now known as Shaldon Wildlife Trust, one of the UK’s finest small zoos. Newquay Children’s Zoo was located in Trenance Garden, across the road from our sister zoo in Newquay and closed shortly after the ‘new’ Newquay Zoo opened in 1969.” (Information source: https://www.paigntonzoo.org.uk/blog/ken-smith-the-unsung-hero-of-paignton-zoo/)
After I met Trudy Smith, John Meek told me of seeing an iconic photograph of Trudy as a Kindertransport child arriving in Britain. Apparently these photos influenced the later Kindertransport statues in Britain at Harwich and Liverpool Street Station:
Remembered … this post is a little digital pebble left on a headstone.
Blog posted by Mark Norris, 27 January 2025, 80 Years on.
Views my own, using research material from the World War Zoo Gardens project at Newquay Zoo, allotment and research blog part 1 2009-19, part two research blog 2019 / 2020 – ongoing.
Blog Post Script
Some websites and blogs disappear (maybe their authors have passed on?) so I am in the habit of screenshots or copied chunks of text for future reference or research. This seems to be the case with blogs such as Werner Cohn’s blog posts about Aryan animals, Aurochs, Bison, Nazi attitudes towards animal welfare and forest protection and the difficult subject of restitution of Jewish property lost during the Holocaust including not only property and artworks but also lifetime season tickets (almost ‘shares’) to German zoos.
Some Jewish families fought long and hard after the war to have their season ticket or shareholder positions reinstated or compensated after the war by some German zoos.
Sadly one of these accounts by the late historian or sociologist Werner Cohn (1926 – 2018) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Cohn seems to have vanished from the web as web stuff often does, hence now a deadlink or unsafe – formerly zoo section at wernercohn.com
Hopefully I have it archived or printed somewhere in my research notes such as this snippet:
“The three neighbourhoods surrounding the Zoo contained about 60,000 Jews in 1935, or about 20,000 Jewish families. Say two thousand of these were Zoo Aktionäre , or half of the total of Zoo stockholders, which, then as now, numbered four thousand. Two thousand is perhaps a high estimate, but for reasons I have given above I would expect the proportion of Jews who had bought Zoo stock to have been very …” Werner Cohn.
Please note: The World War Zoo Gardens project research blog about zoo history and zoo archives is both politically and religiously neutral, so does not enter into correspondence, accept or automatically post comments on political and religious topics.
As Catherine De Courcy quoted in her history of Dublin Zoo, the Zoo being originally an Anglo-Irish project of 1830s Imperial Britain onwards, throughout the upheavals of the Easter Rising during WW1 and the post-war independence period, Dublin Zoo was spared destruction as it was seen as neutral: “A Place of Peaceful Resort” for all. (Chapter 4, p. 119, 2009 edition).
Only a few weeks ago on 7th January 2025, we marked Durrell’s centenary day at Newquay Zoo and at Cornwall College Newquay on what would have been Durrell’s 100th Birthday.
Since its opening by Lee Durrell, there has been a small display of his iconic Jersey Zoo rare species alongside Durrell’s picture on the back wall of the lecture theatre in our Durrell Centre for Wildlife Education at our next door zoo college.
30 January 2025 marks 30 years from Durrell’s early death aged 70.
Other Durrell related posts include one from our Paignton Zoo sister zoo about Ken Smith, one of the many talented keepers who earned the nickname “Durrell’s Right Hand Man”.
Ken Smith (left) with artist Robert Lowes (centre) and naturalist Gerald Durrell (right) holding a captured 8′ boa in British Guiana, 1950 (Image Source: Paignton Zoo)
Ken Snith was formerly a keeper and Superintendent manager at Paignton Zoo in the last years of Herbert Whitley’s life, before Ken and his wife Trudy went on to run several West Country zoos including for a short while our predecessor Newquay Children’s Zoo (1950s-69).
After helping set up Jersey Zoo with Gerald Durrell in 1959 “Ken and his family would return to the South West and take over the lease for Exmouth Zoo, which Paignton had decided to sell. Over the next few years, Ken’s ‘zoo empire’ would expand to encompass four animal collections in the region. In 1963, he opened Poole Park Zoo in Dorset, followed by Teignmouth Children’s Zoo and then [manage] Newquay Children’s Zoo in 1967. Of these four zoos, only one is still open, although it’s now known as Shaldon Wildlife Trust, one of the UK’s finest small zoos and well worth a visit if you’re in the area. Newquay Children’s Zoo was located in Trenance Garden, across the road from our sister zoo in Newquay and closed shortly after the ‘new’ Newquay Zoo opened in 1969.” (Information source: https://www.paigntonzoo.org.uk/blog/ken-smith-the-unsung-hero-of-paignton-zoo/)
From the 1950s and 1960s onwards Paignton (and later Newquay) Zoo would continue to have been linked with Jersey Zoo and Durrell through their involvement in emerging and ongoing conservation breeding programmes for rare animals through the BIAZA (then the Zoo Federation from the mid 1960s) network.
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