Jan Kochanowski
The founder of Grodno Zoo, Jan Kochanowski, was born in 1894 in the city of Grodno. In 1942, local Polish resistance fighters were arrested by the Gestapo for the alleged murder of a German doctor and imprisoned along with other representatives of the intelligentsia of Grodno. When the city turned to the occupation authorities for the release of hostages, the Gestapo chief agreed not to shoot all of the captives. Among the captives to be shot was one Kochanowski teacher Józef Wiewiórski - the father of five or six children. The remaining hostages, including Jan Kochanowski, were to be set free, but Kochanowski appealed to the German officer to include him among those sentenced to death instead of Józef Wiewiórski, since he did not have a family. In the autumn of 1942 Jan Kochanowski was shot dead. Wiewiórski was executed in 1943 together with his family. ==References==