Book Title:  The Zookeeper's Wife:  A War Story

Author: Diane Ackerman
Publishing Company: W. W. Norton & Company
Year:  2007
# of Pages: 368
ISBN:  978-0-393-06172-7   

Reviewed By:  Deborah Ground Buckner (Kansas City Correspondent - USA) 

"[I]f you can save somebody's life, it's your duty to try."  Jan Zabinski, a Polish Christian zookeeper, lived by these words in the dark days of the Holocaust.  The zoo, in war-torn Warsaw following German occupation of Poland, lost its finest animals to the purebred zoos of Germany; animals deemed of lesser value were slaughtered in their cages by Nazi "hunters" engaged in New Year's revels. 

But Jan and his wife, Antonina, found other uses for their zoo.  Their home and zoo grounds became a shelter to "Guests," Jewish people escaping from the Warsaw Ghetto en route to other safe homes in a remarkable network of shelters created by the Polish Underground. 

Author Diane Ackerman draws upon the autobiographical children's books and diaries and notes of Antonina Zabinski, books and recollections of Jan Zabinski, and interviews the husband and wife gave to newspapers after the war.   

Antonina was a major caregiver in the zoo of young or ill animals, and her writings reflect a sensitivity and awareness of animal perceptions and emotions.  Ackerman presents the beginnings of war as experienced through the senses of animals as well as people, and it is captivating.  The reader is pulled into the story of hunted, tortured animals, a story made even more terrible as the quarry becomes a race of humans treated in the same-and often worse-manner.  The descriptions of life in the Jewish Ghetto, overcrowded, disease-ridden with food deliberately kept from the people, are vivid and heart-wrenching, yet a fate far preferable to being shipped away to a concentration camp. 

Jan lived an amazing life on the edge of two dangerous, conflicting worlds.  His work as a zookeeper opened channels of relationships with the Nazis and occupying German officials, giving him access to government offices and into and out of the Jewish Ghetto.  This provided him many opportunities to smuggle people out of the Ghetto to the safety of the zoo and then points beyond.  Family life at the zoo was a constant whirlwind.  Knowing the Polish were perceived to be a people of extended family with many social activities, the Zabinskis capitalized on this, inventing a slew of relatives and friends who came for extended visits.  This reputation of a busy place with many people as the norm diverted suspicions from the sight of a new face or a strange silhouette illuminated in the night.

Ackerman has found an amazing story and has also thoroughly researched all tangential points to the lives and surroundings of the Zabinskis.  There is no question such a story requires sound research, but the research also requires an inspired telling, and here, Ackerman falls short.  Often, the flow of the Zabinskis' story is disrupted so the author can report another bit of information she discovered in her studies.  While the new details are often of interest, they create the question of just which story the author meant to tell.  This loss of focus is distracting and, ultimately, hurts the book.  A great writer of history learns that some details can be omitted if they are not truly part of the story to be told, or, even better, learns how to weave them in to keep the story on track.  Ackerman has a great story; with a bit more skill, this might have been a great book. 

Diana Ackerman is the author of A Natural History of the Senses.  Her essays on nature and human nature have appeared in National Geographic, The New Yorker, the New York Times, Smithsonian and Parade.