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The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story | 
 enlarge | Author: Diane Ackerman
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
Buy New: $14.98
You Save: $8.97 (37%)
New (30) Used (14) Collectible (7) from $14.23
Avg. Customer Rating:  62 reviews
Sales Rank: 515
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.3
ISBN: 0393061728
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.5318350943841
EAN: 9780393061727
ASIN: 0393061728
Publication Date: September 4, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new book. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling books online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20080519212653T
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Amazon.com
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
Product Description
A true story—as powerful as Schindler's List—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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 57 more reviews...
 A haunting look at Poland's enormous losses during WWII April 28, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
As an amateur scholar of Yiddishkeit, my readings have included several novels and biographies set in the Warsaw Ghetto, so I was familiar with the horrific overcrowding and dehumanizing conditions that Warsaw's Jews were subjected to before the Ghetto was razed in 1943 and the remaining survivors were sent to concentration camps. Many of my maternal relatives immigrated from Poland in the early 1900s, and were fortunate to have escaped living through the wars. For the millions trapped in Poland, life turned into a living hell for Jews and Gentiles alike under the Nazi occupation of Warsaw.
In Diane Ackerman's The Zookeeper's Wife, she chronicles the real-life heroism of Antonina and Jan Zabinsk, the zookeepers in charge of the once-prestigious Warsaw Zoo that was heavily damaged in the initial bombing in 1939, who turned to rescuing hundreds of Jews and Polish Underground families attempting to flee for safety.
Antonina has a rare gift, a deep empathy with humans and animals alike that allows her to sense deeply what they are thinking and instinctively understand how to calm them (which saves her life more than once when facing Nazis). Jan was also an active member in the Underground, using his official documents as a pass to smuggle Jews out of the Ghetto, as well as perform acts of sabotage against the Nazis. They face the unknown in their different ways, Antonina attempting to fill the villa with activity, music, and the few animals that she brings indoors (many of the larger zoo animals were killed in bombings, slaughtered by Nazis for sport, or transported to German zoos).
Ackerman's prose hauntingly captures the destruction inflicted by the Nazi bombings, the daily humiliations and indignities that war inflicts on civilian populations, particularly on those trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto. At times, the novel is nearly bogged down by the overenthusiastic descriptions, such as a segment on beetles that goes on for several pages, but these scenic detours serve to illuminate the thinking behind several pivotal characters.
There are certainly important concepts glossed over, such as the Hasidic viewpoint of the Shoah, and at times the quotes taken from Antonina's diary and other documents blur between fiction and recounting based on the sparse endnotes, but the Zookeeper's Wife is a glowing testament to the courage of two unconventional Poles whose bravery saved over 300 lives during one of the darkest periods in modern history.
 Beautiful Book and Beautiful Story April 21, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The story itself is amazing but the way it was written is so exceptional. You can see, you can feel, you can smell when you read descriptions of even the simplest things. The author did lots of research before writing this book and therefore you can learn lot's of interesting facts and details.
a compassion for animals and the downtrodden April 9, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I haven't finished the book yet but it's hard to put down. sometimes it gets a bit long in detail. It's the only book on the holocaust that includes animals - making it so special
The Zookeeper's Wife April 5, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Oh my goodness, what a wonderful story. Set in the period leading up to and during WWII in Warsaw, Poland, this historical novel brings out the true meaning of human kindness and cruelty, human hope and despair. It is beautifully written and moves with incredible swiftness towards an inevitable conclusion. Enjoy!
 Too much text April 2, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
The story in this book is fascinating. It provides the reader with how a real family reacted in WWII.
The issue with the book is there are just too many words. The author seems so interested in writing interestingly that she goes on to describe things in a paragraph that could have taken a sentence or less. I found the beginning of the book particularly difficult to get through. I would have preferred this story told in approximately half the pages.
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