The Zookeeper's Wife

I picked up The Zookeeper’s Wife thinking it sounded like a great story; it wasn’t until I started to read it that I realized it was a true story. Diane Ackerman tells the story of Antonina and Jan Zabinski, Christian Poles who helped saved the lives of over 300 Jews by hiding them in and around their zoo in Warsaw during WWII. Although Jan is the zookeeper who fights with the Underground – and is injured in the Warsaw Uprising – it is Antonina who keeps her “House Under a Crazy Star” together, providing a warm and “normal” environment for her numerous “Guests.”

For the most part I liked the book. It is a heart-warming story, and one many people are probably unfamiliar with. Ackerman writes with poetry and humor, and her descriptions both the people and the animals are interesting and clever. She wrote the book based on Antonina’s journals and personal interviews with survivors, including Antonina’s son, so her descriptions of Antonina’s experiences regarding the events of the war are probably pretty true, and I found them to be honest without being glossed over.

My main complaint about the book is that Ackerman often interrupts the flow of the story to insert research that I found to be unrelated. For instance, one of the Zabinski’s Jewish friends was a collector of insects, and he amassed a huge collection. When the Nazi’s forced all of the Warsaw Jews into the Ghetto, the bug collector smuggled his collection out with Jan to be held for safekeeping at the zoo. Ackerman describes all of the different bugs in the collection for three pages. I understand that she is a naturalist, but it was totally unimportant to the story.

Overall though, this is an enjoyable book (if any book dealing with the Holocaust can be said to be enjoyable). If nothing else, I learned about two war heroes whom I had never before heard of, and that’s something worthwhile.