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| The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story | 
| Author: Diane Ackerman
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
Buy Used: $9.01
You Save: $14.94 (62%)
New (43) Collectible (9) from $13.19
Avg. Customer Rating:  87 reviews
Sales Rank: 12844
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
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| Customer Reviews:
 A haunting look at Poland's enormous losses during WWII April 28, 2008
5 out of 7 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
3 out of 4 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 3 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
4 out of 5 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
4 out of 5 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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