The Zookeeper's Wife

The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

An in-depth account of war-time Warsaw, and the role Jan and Antonina Zabinski played in the underground Polish resistance, specifically in their willingness and ability to hide Jewish people in their home at the zoo, and Jan's skill in sneaking people out of the Ghetto. Antonina, Jan, and their son must be commended for their bravery in doing everything they could to help those in need, both of human and animal variety. They undoubtably saved many lives along the way.

Parts of this book were really hard to read. It was bad enough to hear about the animals killed German bombs, and those shot for fear they would escape and kill citizens, but the descriptions of Nazi's using the zoo as their private hunting ground was nauseating and disturbing, especially as the group was led by a German zookeeper. But what else can we expect from people who are willing to slaughter wholesale other humans? Why would they prize the lives of animals that are deemed to be not useful to their cause?

I thought this book was compelling, but I feel like it could have been shaped, or perhaps paced, better. There were lots of very detailed stories, anecdotes you might call them, about their lives during the war, and although the book seemed to be written chronologically for the most part, sometimes it was hard to see how those individual stories fit inside the big picture of the war. I loved hearing about all the animals that they made family, but was so sad when every one of those stories seemed to end with something like, "and then we never saw them again," or "we all laughed at the drunk hamster, but of course that didn't end well, his dead corpse was laying in the cage the next morning."

Another thing that bothered me is that the title is a little misleading. Yes, Antonina is a main character in this story, and it appears a lot of the information was garnered from her journals, it felt more like a story about both Antonina and Yan, as well as about wartime in Warsaw in general. I wanted to feel more connected to Antonina, and feel more of the story from her point of view specifically. By the way, I think when you're secretly hiding Jews during WWII, maybe you shouldn't keep a journal that anyone can find, but that's just me.

View all my reviews