The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’ve rated this book 3.5 stars
According to Jewish legend, these few, through their good hearts and good deeds, keep the too-wicked world from being destroyed. For their sake alone, all of humanity is spared. The legend tells that they are ordinary people, not flawless or magical, and that most of them remain unrecognized throughout their lives, while they choose to perpetuate goodness, even in the midst of inferno.
It’s stories like this–stories about the ordinary who found a way to be extraordinary–that remind me of the hope in this world. It’s people that we know are there, such as the zookeeper and his family, but we don’t think of them having made much of a difference in such a huge world event that deserve the attention. Reading this book and knowing that it all really happened is the reason I read books–it’s inspiring and heartbreaking and hope-providing.
This story about Jan and Antonina Zabinski and their family at the Warsaw Zoo during World War II. We walk through there experience as told through the piecing together of several first-hand accounts (mostly from Antonina’s diaries), beginning at the start of the war, through Germany’s invasion of Poland, and up to the present day as the author walks throughout the setting of this amazing true story. It’s a beautiful, horrific, and inspiring story of true heroism as this couple took many hiding Jews into their small home on the zoo. They hid people in cages, in their home, and sent them on their own “Underground Railroad” to safety. Along with their own small zoo of animals they attempted to save, they took anyone in that was in need. They assisted in the Home Army’s uprising and offered their own limited resources to those living in the Ghetto, all while raising their own family. Although this story is not one many people have heard, it is one worth reading.
It’s so easy to see another book about someone’s story from World War II and to think that it’s been told before and we’ve heard it enough. But every one of those stories needs to be told because of how horrific that even was. Movies don’t do it justice. Reading a wife and mother’s account of her hometown being blown to bits, how she had to make the impossible decisions to save her friends (and even strangers) at her own family’s risk, and how she kept her head about her throughout every worst nightmare all shows me my own strength–would I be able to do this? “They desperately needed hope that a safe haven even existed, that the war’s horrors would one day end…” she wrote in her diary of the poor Guests she would find at her doorstep. Antonina’s experience in the war shows humanity at its greatest. She was strong and selfless, and although she had her faults as any person does, she did what she had to do to save as many as she possibly could. She was intelligent and observant, once wondering “why do we humanize animals and animalize humans?” Her husband, Jan, even commenting to an Israeli newspaper,
Antonina was a housewife…she wasn’t involved in politics or war, and was timid, and yet despite that she played a major role in saving others and never once complained about the danger…. Her confidence could disarm even the most hostile.
The Warsaw Zookeepers were heroes.
I loved this story, although I felt that there was a lot of information in the book that wasn’t necessary and only made me tired. Ackerman definitely did her research, looking into people who had anything to do with the zoo and the war, whether or not they ever crossed paths with the Zabinski’s. There were entire chapters with background information that I didn’t really care about. It was fascinating to read the final chapter about where many of the people ended up, but a lot of the information only slowed me down. I only really wanted to read about Jan and Antonina. However, the story was incredibly well researched and well written–almost as a novel. It was exciting and thrilling and I would recommend to anyone.
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