Book Review: The Zookeeper’s Wife

The Zookeeper’s Wife
Diane Ackerman
Version: Kindle, borrowed through Overdrive/Maryland Digital Library Consortium
Biography, History, Non-Fiction
You might like it if you enjoy stories of ordinary people doing their part to help others, stories about World War 2, or stories about interesting, strong women.


I remember hearing about this book years ago.  I remember being intrigued by the title and it being on that vague list of books in my head that I should read because people were talking about it, but it never made it fully onto my radar, not even enough to read a review or find out what it was about. I hadn’t read anything else by the author, so nothing connected me there. I also vaguely remember that there was a movie about it last year, but I didn’t see it. Then, in our plans for going to the Czech Republic and Poland, Corinne put the Warsaw Zoo on our itinerary because of this book, and I thought, “I really should read it." Then my daughter’s wedding, major house renovations, and my son’s mission homecoming completely took over my life and I mentally opted out of helping with any planning of the trip. I willingly let Corinne and Erin take the lead. I just couldn’t dive in. At one point before our trip, Corinne invited me to watch the movie at her house, but at the time I wasn’t available. I still wasn’t sure what the story was about or what exactly we were going to see at the Warsaw Zoo but I wasn’t any less excited to go. But at least the book finally made it officially onto my TBR list.

Fast forward to the day we went to the Warsaw Zoo. I knew we were visiting the Crazy Star Villa. I still didn’t know why. So, I experienced the house and the guide’s telling of the story with fresh eyes and ears, and it was amazing. One of my favorite days of the trip. It was deeply meaningful to me.

Now you know that I read the book with the memory of the actual place and the things I felt that day fairly fresh in my mind. From the get-go, I loved the writing. So. Much. I’m a total word geek, and her beautiful use of adjectives and metaphors captured and absorbed me completely. She goes back and forth between the larger historical narrative of the war in Warsaw and the small, intimate stories of her and her husband’s involvement in the underground resistance efforts. This I love. Bringing a big, sprawling story such as the machinations of the Nazi regime into the focal plane of one family’s life always helps me make connections and better understand. The Zookeeper's house inside the Warsaw Zoo was the center point of a years-long clandestine operation to save Jews and others targeted by Hitler.

I remember feeling so keenly that Antonina, the Zookeeper's wife,  was a lot like me. She was chiefly a wife and mother, but for me, those are roles that connect women with the entire universe of human experience. Home is the source of all practical, actuating power and goodness in the world. In her partnership with her husband and her concern for her family, she acted in ways that became heroic. I have had less historically important, but still significant opportunities to act in similar ways, and so have most of the women I know. Doing what you can within the orbit you occupy is, in the end, the most influential work any of us can do. Antonina, in the daily process of helping to hide and move those affected by Nazi terror, didn’t do one calculated big thing, she did a million small things in response to the needs of the moment. She acted, she improvised, she innovated. She cared, she served, she accepted her role as matriarch, and I admire that so much. It is such a good reminder that our lives are never lived in isolation. We can change the course of one person’s life and it will matter.

After having that be my lingering takeaway from the house tour, I was so happy that this book, in drawing heavily from Antonina’s diaries, emphasized her ordinary nobility and her resilient character in the face of a seemingly impossible situation. I love this quote:

The leadership of the zoo's little fiefdom fell to her, she realized, including Rys, four-week-old Teresa, the girls Nunia and Ewa, her mother-in-law, the housekeeper, Fox Man and his two helpers. The "heavy ballast of being responsible for the lives of others" slid around her body and stole through her mind as obsession: The seriousness of the situation didn't let me relax for a moment. No matter if I wanted to or not, I had to take a leadership of our household. . .be on alert all the time like I was taught in my Girl Scout years. And I knew that Jan had much more difficult duties. I had a powerful feeling of being responsible for taking care of everything at home; I carried those thoughts obsessively. . .. I just knew I had to do it. Sleep surrendered to war, and for twenty-three nights she forced herself to stay awake, terrified that she might doze off and not hear a noise, however tiny, that signaled danger. In some ways, this guardian spirit wasn't new to Antonina, who remembered how, during the shellings of 1939, she had shielded her young son with her body. It sprang from the ferocity of motherhood, she decided, the instinct to battle if need be to protect one's family.

She made a home for the displaced, and 300 people survived the war, not just because of the place she made for them, but because of the sensation of home they experienced while in her care. She helped build or rebuild hope.

I'm so grateful for the opportunity I had to see the restored rooms where Antonina and her family did this marvelous thing for those 300 people. I do not take it lightly. I'm also grateful for her example and for the many small actions that any of us can take to make a difference in the world.