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The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story (Paperback)
by Diane Ackerman (Author)
Textbook Details
* Paperback: 368 pages
* Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. (September 17, 2008)
* Language: English
* ISBN-10: 039333306X
* ISBN-13: 978-0393333060
* Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 1 inches
* Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
* Rating: 
Textbook Description
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.
The Zookeeper’s Wife Review
Jan and Antonina Zabinski, the Zookeeper and his wife, translate their extraordinary skills at rescuing and nurturing wildlife in the Warsaw Zoo to tending the ecology of Jewish Poles adopting new identities and fleeing Warsaw through a system of safe houses, including both animal facilities and the Zabinskis’ own home in the Warsaw Zoo. Written using citations from Antonina Zabinski’s journals about daily life at the Zoo Director’s Villa as the focal point, Diane Ackerman exquisitely details the history of the Warsaw Occupation by Nazis, and the Polish Resistance during WWII. By telling the true story of Jan and Antonina Zabinski, the author creates a background against which we momentarily glimpse the lives of many named individuals – under duress and in detail. Diane Ackerman’s literary style gives a living immediacy, wonder, and presence to history. Excellent supplemental reading for classes in European History, as well as English classes on Nonfiction Writing. One of the best books I have ever read.
I am really glad I decided to read this book as it informed me about a whole segment of WWII that I’d never even thought about. I loved reading about all the animals, however two pages devoted to the names of beetles was a tad ridiculous, but I really felt like I could understand the behaviors of The Zookeeper’s Wife, Antonina. There are so many details in this book the author must have researched for years to complete it. It would be an excellent movie, probably more so than a book, because there are many descriptive settings and events. This was not a book I scrambled to read each night, but more of a slow growing respect for the characters and extreme hardships they, including the poor animals, all had to endure. I wouldn’t recommend this book to the casual reader looking for an easy-to-read novel. If you are looking for an insightful book about a facet of the War that hasn’t been over-saturated then I would highly recommend The Zookeeper’s Wife.
The Zookeeper’s Wife is an excellent book with a unique perspective of the Holocaust. It is based on the journals of the wife of the zookeeper at the Warsaw Zoo in Poland when it is first invaded by the Nazis. She has raised many of the zoo’s animals by hand and is devastated when the zoo is bombed and animals killed. She worries how she will protect her young son if she can not even protect the animals. I have read many books on the Holocaust, but none quite like this. By reading it you will learn about history through a woman and mother’s eyes, animals, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Polish Resistance. Although it is sad, I could not put the book down.
In a superbly told epic story of survival under terrifying circumstances, The Zookeeper’s Wife depicts war and nature together, juxtaposing empathic descriptions of nature and animals and the brutal Nazi occupation of Warsaw, Poland. The narrative draws the reader into the daily activities of a family during years of deprivation, from 1939 pre-war Poland to occupation by the Russian army in 1945. Combining history and the intimacy of family life, naturalist Diane Ackerman relates how Antonina Zabinski and her husband, Jan, sheltered and saved more than three hundred Jews in their villa and adjacent buildings on the grounds of the Warsaw Zoo. Antonina, a quiet, introspective, knowing woman of the early to mid twentieth century, sensed the underside of things and from that deep knowledge, tempered the violence in which she lived. Her calm courage in the face of great difficulty is never overstated, nor is she made out to be a heroine. Rather, she is a woman doing what she does best and doing it amazingly well in the horrifying circumstance of occupied Poland seventy years ago.
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