The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story [Paperback]

Diane Ackerman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 17, 2008

The New York Times bestseller: 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

Editorial Reviews

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

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (September 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 039333306X
• ISBN-13: 978-0393333060
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (232 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,900 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #7 in Books > History > Europe > Poland
  • #8 in Books > History > Europe > Eastern
  • #97 in Books > History > Military > World War II

More About the Author

Diane Ackerman is the acclaimed author of "A Natural History of the Senses," the bestselling "The Zookeeper's Wife," "Dawn Light," and many other books. She lives in Ithaca, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

364 of 385 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 'Why do we humanize animals and animalize humans?', September 9, 2007

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story (Hardcover)

There are many stories that continue to come out of the WW II experience, stories of courage, love and survival in the face of near hopeless situations inflicted upon the globe by Nazi Germany, and, thankfully, biographies of heroes whose moral convictions were stronger than the destructive forces of Hitler's cadre. THE ZOOKEEPER'S WIFE is yet another unknown story, a true tale of survival of the human spirit pitted against what seemed to be the end of the world in Poland. Yet this book is not 'just another war story'. As presented by the astute investigator and gifted writer Diane Ackerman, whose many books include 'A Natural History of the Senses', 'An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain', 'The Moon by Whale Light - and Other Adventures Among Bats, Penguins', Crocodilians and Whales', 'A Natural History of Love', 'Deep Play', 'Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden', 'The Rarest of the Rare: Vanishing Animals, Timeless Worlds', and anthologies of poems such as 'I Praise My Destroyer: Poems' and 'Jaguar of Sweet Laughter: New and Selected Poems', this is a magical tale about a couple in Warsaw whose roles as zookeepers allowed their shared appreciation for animal life and ways of adapting to devise ingenious ways to protect many of the Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto from mass execution.

Jan and Antonina Zabinski were Polish Christian keepers of the Zoo when the Germans under Hitler's scheme of world domination and purification of Europe for the chosen race of Aryans began. Ackerman quietly builds her setting by concentrating on the special gifts of these two remarkable people in caring for the animals of the zoo: her descriptions of the various members of the menagerie are at once comical and insightful. When Hitler's move into Poland began the Zabinskis, long friends with the many Jews who lived around them, devised clever ways to turn the zoo and their own villa into a safe haven for the increasingly threatened annihilation of their friends who happened to be Jewish. Throughout the horrors of the German destruction of the city and the attempts of the Warsaw Uprising, led in part by Jan Zabinski, the couple maintained an atmosphere of calm and grace for the some 300 Jews in their hiding. Using the Zoo as a shield to deflect occupying German interest in animal studies as a part of their theory of purification, and as a means to gather food in the Jewish Ghetto for the 'animals', they were able to feed their 'guests' and provide papers and documents to aid the escape of the Jews who chose to flee Poland. And after the war the Zabinskis continued to refurbish the zoo and offer sanctity to those Jews whose lives had been so devastated during the crush of Warsaw.

Ackerman is a master craftsman and her depth of scientific knowledge about the animal kingdom makes her ability to relate this story of 'The Zookeeper's Wife' match the inordinate amount of research about her subjects to create an important document about an historical fact previously unknown. And yet her ability to invest her story with poetic force is always evident: '...war plays havoc with sensory memories as the sheer intensity of each moment, the roiling adrenaline and fast pulse, drive memories in deeper, embed every small detail, and make events unforgettable. While that can strengthen friendship or love, it can also taint sensory treasures like music. By associating any tune with danger, one never again hears it without adrenaline pounding as memory hits consciousness followed by a jolt of fear...It's a terrific way to ruin great music'.

There are times in this fine novel when the reader is jarred from the flow of the story being told by Ackerman's insertions of data or stepping in to remind us that she interviewed some of the survivors in her research: the drama of the tale is diluted momentarily by facts and figures and names, moving the reader away from the visceral experience of the Zabinski's story to remind us that we are reading a documented biography. Yet in the end the book is so powerful, so overflowing with gracious writing and so full of the indomitable human spirit that such small 'flaws' become inconsequential. Ackerman has unveiled another great moment in the histories of human kindness during times of war, and we are the richer for it. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, September 07

272 of 294 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story, November 4, 2007

By 

John Sollami (Stamford, CT) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story (Hardcover)

I feel bad knocking this book because the story of Jan and Antonina Zabinski is one of two amazing people in Warsaw during the German occupation who demonstrated courage, brilliance, resilience, and humanity in the face of the grossest barbarism this planet has seen. Yet, Diane Ackerman has placed me in this position with her absurdly overblown writing, her precious turns of phrase, and her inability to establish a coherent timeline or storyline for what she's relating. I made note of more outstanding examples of her jarring images: "In a darkness that deep, fireflies dance across eyes that see into themselves." "Once its sprightly melody had been a favorite of hers, but war plays havoc with sensory memories as the sheer intensity of each moment, the roiling adrenaline and fast pulse, drive memories in deeper, embed every small detail, and make events unforgettable." "Meanwhile, the brain piped fugues of worry and staged mind-theaters full of tragedies and triumphs, because unfortunately, the fear of death does wonders to focus the mind, inspire creativity, and heighten the senses. Trusting one's hunches only seems a gamble if one has time for SEEM...." It seems Ms. Ackerman imagines herself to be the mistress of human senses and is writing beyond her material at hand. Too bad, because she had access to primary sources, to Antonina's extraordinary diary, which I wouldn't have minded reading without its being filtered through this author.

Nonetheless, the awful times in Poland and Warsaw come crashing through Ackerman's writing anyway. One wonders how any people at all survived German barbarity. The story of the Warsaw ghetto and its brave and tortured souls is vividly rendered, although not in a coherent fashion, as one has to dance from one chapter to the next to get a real sense of its nightmarish horror. The Zabinskis, particularly Jan, risked the lives of their son and daughter to harbor utterly wretched Jews ("Guests") in the labyrinthine zoo quarters. Bold young Polish Jews sabatoging the Germans would find a harbor there, even for short periods of time until they could be moved again to another safe harbor in the active Polish underground. It's a terrifying and remarkable story which made me think what I would have done in similar circumstances as a free person, knowing the crass injustices, blatant torture, and outright murder going on around me.

This book also tells of a mother's overpowering love for her son. At every turn, Antonina protected Rys as best she could, with varying degrees of success. We aren't sure of Rys's age, but I guess he was between 8 and 12 during the most awful events. Ackerman constantly returns to this mother/son relationship as a recurring theme, as it must have figured prominently in Antonina's diary.

I wished this story had been handled by another writer, but it hasn't been. It's still worth reading, as the events and tales of rescue and survival are so stirring that even bad prose can't detract from them. So I recommend this book, even if you cringe at the rhetorical nonsense it sometimes contains.

137 of 149 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A new story from World War II, September 9, 2007

By 

David W. Nicholas (Van Nuys, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story (Hardcover)

This book recounts one of those odd, quirky episodes in history which illuminate a variety of circumstances and events in a whole new light. When Warsaw fell at the beginning of the Second World War, the city had one of the better-known zoos in Europe. The zookeeper, Jan Zabinski, his wife Antonina, and their son Rys, lived on the grounds in an official residence. Jan served briefly in the army during the fighting, and was captured. He almost immediately had a stroke of luck, though: he met an old friend, a German zookeeper serving in the German army, and the friend escorted Zabinski back to his zoo.

Over the next five years, until the zoo was liberated along with the rest of Warsaw towards the end of the year, the Zabinskis used their positions as zookeeper and wife, and local celebrities, to conceal several hundred Jews and other refugees from the Nazis, some of them hiding in the now disused animal cages on the grounds of the zoo (many of the animals were killed by soldiers, or starved to death). Jan Zabinski was involved in partisan activities, and concealed munitions and other supplies in places he didn't think anyone would look. At the start of the war, it turned out that the Nazis were interested in the zoo for two primary reasons: one, they wanted to "move to safekeeping" any rare animals it had--the safekeeping of course being in a German zoo; and two, they were obsessed with resurrecting extinct species of animal that they thought "wild" and "untamed" and "pure". Because of these obsessions, they let the zoo continue to operate at a lower level much longer than they otherwise would have, and the Zabinskis were able to rescue hundreds of lives as a result.

The author does a reasonably good job of recounting the situation that the war put the Zabinskis in, and she has skill with words and sentences. It is a bit odd for a historian at this level (the book is obviously meant for a general audience) to discuss sources and what people intended for posterity to think with her readers. This leads to some unusual syntax and paragraphs, to say the least, but I found it for the most part interesting and enjoyable. The author pulls no punches, either, though she doesn't draw parallels: the Nazis were the most militant environmentalists and animal rights advocates the world has ever seen. Believe it or not, Hitler outlawed most vivisection and animal testing. They used Jews instead. On one occasion in Ackerman's book, a German scientist is punished for inadequately anesthetizing a worm before conducting an experiment on it.

I enjoyed this book a great deal, and think the general reader will find it fascinating