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The New York Times bestseller soon to be a major motion picture starring Jessica Chastain.
A true story in which the keepers of the Warsaw Zoo saved hundreds of people from Nazi hands.
When Germany invaded Poland, Stuka bombers devastated Warsaw―and the city's zoo along with it. With most of their animals dead, zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski began smuggling Jews into empty cages. Another dozen "guests" hid inside the Zabinskis' villa, emerging after dark for dinner, socializing, and, during rare moments of calm, piano concerts. Jan, active in the Polish resistance, kept ammunition buried in the elephant enclosure and stashed explosives in the animal hospital. Meanwhile, Antonina kept her unusual household afloat, caring for both its human and its animal inhabitants―otters, a badger, hyena pups, lynxes.With her exuberant prose and exquisite sensitivity to the natural world, Diane Ackerman engages us viscerally in the lives of the zoo animals, their keepers, and their hidden visitors. She shows us how Antonina refused to give in to the penetrating fear of discovery, keeping alive an atmosphere of play and innocence even as Europe crumbled around her. 8 pages of illustrations
- Sales Rank: #11162 in Books
- Brand: Ackerman, Diane
- Published on: 2007-09-17
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.60" h x 1.20" w x 5.80" l, 1.20 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 368 pages
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Significant Seven, September 2007: On the heels of Alan Weisman's The World Without Us I picked up Diane Ackerman's The Zookeeper’s Wife. Both books take you to Poland's forest primeval, the Bialowieza, and paint a richly textured portrait of a natural world that few of us would recognize. The similarities end there, however, as Ackerman explores how that sense of natural order imploded under the Nazi occupation of Poland. Jan and Antonina Zabiniski--keepers of the Warsaw Zoo who sheltered Jews from the Warsaw ghetto--serve as Ackerman's lens to this moment in time, and she weaves their experiences and reflections so seamlessly into the story that it would be easy to read the book as Antonina's own miraculous memoir. Jan and Antonina's passion for life in all its diversity illustrates ever more powerfully just how narrow the Nazi worldview was, and what tragedy it wreaked. The Zookeeper’s Wife is a powerful testament to their courage and--like Irene Nemirovsky's Suite Francaise--brings this period of European history into intimate view. --Anne Bartholomew
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Ackerman (A Natural History of the Senses) tells the remarkable WWII story of Jan Zabinski, the director of the Warsaw Zoo, and his wife, Antonina, who, with courage and coolheaded ingenuity, sheltered 300 Jews as well as Polish resisters in their villa and in animal cages and sheds. Using Antonina's diaries, other contemporary sources and her own research in Poland, Ackerman takes us into the Warsaw ghetto and the 1943 Jewish uprising and also describes the Poles' revolt against the Nazi occupiers in 1944. She introduces us to such varied figures as Lutz Heck, the duplicitous head of the Berlin zoo; Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, spiritual head of the ghetto; and the leaders of Zegota, the Polish organization that rescued Jews. Ackerman reveals other rescuers, like Dr. Mada Walter, who helped many Jews pass, giving lessons on how to appear Aryan and not attract notice. Ackerman's writing is viscerally evocative, as in her description of the effects of the German bombing of the zoo area: ...the sky broke open and whistling fire hurtled down, cages exploded, moats rained upward, iron bars squealed as they wrenched apart. This suspenseful beautifully crafted story deserves a wide readership. 8 pages of illus. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Jan Zabinski, the innovative director of the Warsaw Zoo, and Antonina, his empathic wife, lived joyfully on the zoo grounds during the 1930s with their young son, Ryszard (Polish for lynx), and a menagerie of animals needing special attention. The zoo was badly damaged by the Nazi blitzkrieg, and their bit of paradise would have been utterly destroyed but for the director of the Berlin Zoo, Lutz Heck, who wanted Jan's help in resurrecting extinct "pure-blooded species" in pursuit of Aryan perfection in the animal kingdom. Resourceful and courageous, the Zabinskis turned the decimated zoo into a refuge and saved the lives of several hundred imperiled Jews. Ackerman has written many stellar works, including A Natural History of the Senses (1990) and An Alchemy of Mind (2004), but this is the book she was born to write. Sharing the Zabinskis' knowledge of and reverence for the natural world and drawing on her poet's gift for dazzling metaphor, she captures with breathtaking precision and discernment our kinship with animals, the barbarity of war, Antonina's unbounded kindness and keen delight in "life's sensory bazaar," Jan's daring work with the Polish Underground, and the audacity of the Zabinskis' mission of mercy. An exemplary work of scholarship and an "ecstasy of imagining," Ackerman's affecting telling of the heroic Zabinskis' dramatic story illuminates the profound connection between humankind and nature, and celebrates life's beauty, mystery, and tenacity. Seaman, Donna
Most helpful customer reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
the Zabinskis took great risks to save hundreds of Jews during World War ...
By T. Hyrkas
The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman is the historical narrative of Christian Polish zookeepers, Jan Zabinski, a trained zoologist and the director of the Warsaw zoo, and his wife, Antonina. Taken primarily from the memoirs, diaries, and autobiographical children’s books of Antonina, Ackerman has produced a book that squarely faces the horror of Hitler’s plans to destroy every aspect of Poland’s multi-faceted identity. Within this crucible of malevolence, the Zabinskis took great risks to save hundreds of Jews during World War II. The author chose to write about the Zabinskis to honor their great heroism during the Nazi regime in Poland “…when even handing a thirsty Jew a cup of water was punishable by death.” Although the action of the story is carried out primarily through Jan, the lens through which we view the action is Antonina’s.
Starting in 1931 the Zabinskis lived in a villa in Praga, just outside Warsaw, not far from the zoo. At their villa they kept a number of injured or orphaned zoo animals and allowed the creatures to roam freely about their residence. This was not simply a necessity due to the care that some of the animals required, it was a scientific approach for Jan. Ackerman records this comment by Jan: “It’s not enough to do research from a distance. It’s by living beside animals that you learn their behaviors and psychology.” As for Antonina, this was a lifestyle that she also relished. An “animal whisperer” before anyone heard of the term, Antonina had, according to her husband’s notes, had an “uncanny ability to calm unruly animals.”
From their home in Praga the Zabinskis could see the rooftops of the Old Town of Warsaw. Just outside the Old Town lay the large Jewish Quarter with a population of about 300,000 Jews, which, says Ackerman, was “the heartbeat of eastern European Jewish culture.” The Jews who lived in the Jewish Quarter maintained their own style of dress, culture, language and religion and many spoke no Polish, according to Ackerman.
Rumors of war were everywhere in Warsaw in the summer of 1939, and they proved to be prophetic. On September 1, Hitler invaded Poland. On September 7, forty-two year old Jan was formally ordered to join the Polish army at the front, and all civilians were directed to vacate the zoo at once. Antonina took their young son, Rys, and sought refuge where she could in Warsaw as the Germans began 1,150 bombing sorties over the city.
During the bombings, concerns about the animals eventually caused Antonina and a few keepers to go to the zoo to assess the damage, which they found to be extensive. Many animals were killed and buildings were destroyed by bullets, bombs and fire. Some animals escaped and entered the Old Town while Warsaw was in flames. “People brave enough to stand by their windows…watched a biblical hallucination unfolding as the zoo emptied into Warsaw streets,” writes Ackerman.
Poland soon surrendered to Hitler and what was left of Jan’s military contingent left the front to return to their homes. In an astonishing story that verges on the miraculous, Jan was reunited with Antonina and Rys at his sister’s apartment in Warsaw. After a brief stay in the city the little family walked back to their damaged villa to resume caring for the zoo and its remaining animals.
Ackerman writes that “Under the Third Reich, animals became noble, mythic, almost angelic — including humans of course, but not Slavs, Gypsies, Catholics or Jews.” Laws were soon in place for the elimination of these “sub-human” specimens. As Hitler’s plans for the destruction of Poland and its people unfolded, the liquidation of the Warsaw zoo also became a reality. Though devastated by the Reich’s decision, Jan saw an opportunity and convinced director Lutz Heck, a powerful Nazi leader and a zoologist, to use the old zoo buildings as a large pig farm. Ackerman records this: “According to testimony [Jan] gave to the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, by using the ruse of gathering scraps for feeding pigs, he hoped to ‘bring notes, bacon, and butter and carry messages for friends in the Ghetto.” This was only one of the ways that the Zabinskis helped the Jews during the war.
Other resistance activities included the incredible risk of hiding an ammunition dump for the Polish Home Army in the middle of the zoo. About this, Ackerman writes: “As Jan thought, it never occurred to the Germans that a Pole would be that gutsy, because they regarded Slavs as a fainthearted and stupid race fit only for physical labor.”
When it came to hiding refugees, the zoo was by no means the ideal location says Ackerman. “The villa stood close to Ratuszowa Street, right out in the open like a lighthouse, surrounded only by cages and habitats.” But the Zabinskis took in many “guests,” approximately three hundred, whom they hid either in the villa or on the zoo’s property as the refugees passed through to their final destinations.
Why did the Zabinskis take the tremendous risk of rescuing Jews during the war? Ackerman has this answer from an interview conducted with Jan by reporter Noah Kliger of the Israeli newspaper, Yediot Aharonot: “I only did my duty — if you can save somebody’s life, it’s your duty to try.”
I hope you find time to read A War Story: The Zookeeper’s Wife, by Diane Ackerman. That it can be seen as a modern type of the story of Noah’s ark adds an additional level of amazement. Jan and Antonina Zabinski were named by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations in 1965.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Worst written book about the Holocaust in Warsaw
By Kindle Customer
The story was about a woman who helped hundreds of Jews and educated Poles escape execution by housing or hiding them in her husband's zoo. But the "story" is interspersed with long quotes and stories about various Jewish "Guests" of the zoo which traversed past and future. It jumped around so much with quotes and facts thrown in with wanton disregard, that the story was lost and struggled to even be about poor Antonina. It could've been a great historical novel (or a novel of great historical significance) but the author used so much original material that it resembled a poorly thrown together thesis. The quiet perspective of Antonina's life during Warsaw's horrible destruction was quite lost despite much of the material coming from her diary. I persevered to the end and enjoyed a few brief sentences about Rys, her son and Teresa, her daughter after the war.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Worth reading
By NinjaRyan
This Book was very hard to get into, I wanted to give up reading it many times. However, all of the rich and amazing stories kept me going. When I reached the end of the book I felt much more educated on what happened in Poland. I also found myself discussing the book with many people. I really felt compassion for the people,and what they endured. I only gave it three stars because it was such a hard book to get through.
See all 567 customer reviews...
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