The Zookeeper's Wife
Books | History / Europe / Eastern
3.7
(376)
Diane Ackerman
The New York Times bestseller now 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. Jan and Antonina Zabinski were Polish Christian zookeepers horrified by Nazi racism, who managed to save over three hundred people. Yet their story has fallen between the seams of history. Drawing on Antonina’s diary and other historical sources, best-selling naturalist Diane Ackerman vividly re-creates Antonina’s life as “the zookeeper’s wife,” responsible for her own family, the zoo animals, and their “Guests”—Resistance activists and refugee Jews, many of whom Jan had smuggled from the Warsaw Ghetto. Ironically, the empty zoo cages helped to hide scores of doomed people, who were code-named after the animals whose names they occupied. Others hid in the nooks and crannies of the house itself. Jan led a cell of saboteurs, and the Zabinskis’ young son risked his life carrying food to the Guests, while also tending an eccentric array of creatures in the house. With hidden people having animal names, and pet animals having human names, it’s small wonder the zoo’s codename became “The House Under a Crazy Star.” Yet there is more to this story than a colorful cast. With her exquisite sensitivity to the natural world, Diane Ackerman explores the role of nature in both kindness and savagery, and she unravels the fascinating and disturbing obsession at the core of Nazism: both a worship of nature and its violation, as humans sought to control the genome of the entire planet.
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More Details:
Author
Diane Ackerman
Pages
368
Publisher
W. W. Norton & Company
Published Date
2008-08-26
ISBN
039333306X 9780393333060
Community ReviewsSee all
"An interesting read full of many little known (to me) facts about the Warsaw Ghetto and many different types of animals. There is a bit of a story woven throughout the book. Did not finish "
F
Faith
"I always enjoy reading about WW2 from a variety of perspectives. I always get to learn something new about an important time in our history. This book intrigued me at first because I had heard of the movie and wanted to learn more. However the way the story was told was not one I am used to and therefore made it harder to read. The author chose to write the story from an outsiders perspective, frequently mentioning things like “Antonia wrote” or “she recalled later on” almost as if she was paraphrasing from someone’s diary. I thought this was more of a historical fiction story but now I feel it was more of a biography. Still a great story just not what I was expecting."
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