The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story, by Diane Ackerman is an amazing book on so many levels. From incredible word-images, to profound scenarios, Ackerman takes us on a journey through Warsaw, Poland, through the eyes of two zookeepers, Jan and Antonina Zabrinski. Jan was the director of the Warsaw Zoo, Antonina was his wife.
It is an incredible story of fortitude and strength, love of animals (large and tiny) and love of humanity. The Zabinskis felt that every organism, no matter how minute, was a part of the scheme of the earth and universe. This attitude prompted them to take the course of action that they did. The force involved in Jan and Antonina’s acts of human kindness are not only conceived out of circumstance, but out of their almost innate necessity to save Jewish individuals in WWII Warsaw. They were not Jewish, in fact Jan declared himself an atheist, and Antonina was a Catholic. They knew the risks they were taking, but chose to help others at the expense of not only their lives, but their young son’s life, and their newborn daughter’s life. Jan and Antonina had a deep respect and devotion to caring for life, in all of its forms, from the most minute insect, bit of algae or moss, to the largest of animals, including their favorite lynxes.
It was this devotion, their ideals and values for what constitutes life and its worth, and their moral code, which consumed their every thought and emotion during World War II. This innate passion for saving life, turned their villa and the zoo into a refuge, for animals that you wouldn’t expect to find in a zoo setting. This is true account is one of many unusual stories to come out of World War II. Antonina played a large role while Jan was off at war, and when he was imprisoned, in continuing to keep the Jews and partisans hidden. Through journals, articles, and historical documentation, the author has written the Zabrinksi’s unique Holocaust story, from their extremely unusual perspective.
The author had access to Antonina’s diary, and has infused the pages with direct quotes from it. It was a barbarous time period, and the brutality and harshness is reflected quite well within the book. The word imagery is strong, and it is sometimes difficult to discern where Antonina began, and where Ackerman evokes her own telling. Nonetheless, the book is factual, within its poetic aspects. Some details are sweetened, mainly pertaining to the people, animals and their lives within the confines of the villa. The author infuses some of her own thoughts, blending them with Antonina’s (she, herself states this) The Holocaust itself, and atrocious events and occurrences are not sugared in any aspect. The entire family is portrayed in the book.
The zoo and the villa become a human menagerie, no let me say they become a menagerie for both humans and other life forms, tiny to huge. It was like a Noah’s Ark. Each with their own respective and unique personality, each with their own needs and strengths, adapting within unique surroundings and under difficult circumstances. All life forms in the villa live together in a carnival and tour de farce environment, yet live in harmony. The Zookeeper’s Wife chronicles human and animals, and their lives within the confines of the Holocaust and war-torn Poland like it has never been documented before.
The heroine’s actions are vividly demonstrated throughout the book, Antonina’s almost innate sense of not only caring for the animals in the zoo, but getting into their minds, and reading their thoughts, sparked her passion for the value of life, the worth of all animals, small to great, that encouraged her in her endeavors to shelter almost 300 Jews in the zoo, within the confines of barred cages, underground passages, huts, secret hiding places in her villa, etc. Any place she could conceive of as a dwelling for hiding Jews, became one. Any disguise thought of was utilized for the Jews, whether it be aunt, uncle, or other visiting relatives and friends, ruses were created.
Antonina’s story, taken from her journal is captivating, poignant, intriguing, humorous, tear-jerker material, and compelling as no other story you have read. Ackerman’s story, which surrounds Antonina’s, is poetic prose, a weaving of lives. She is often seems long-winded in her descriptions and word images, but once you get past them, you realize there is a purpose behind the prose. Ackerman wrote this way for a reason, and it isn’t necessarily apparent in the beginning.
The Zookeeper’s Wife often reads like a beautiful prose-poem, of breathtaking writing and astounding imagery seeping through the pages. Ackerman is brilliant in not only her prose, but also in the scientific aspect of the animal kingdom. She sometimes rambles on regarding various species (much like I have rambled in this review), but in the end, it is for a reason, and coincides with the humans and their own stories of survival. She compares and contrasts humans and their evolution with animals.
He was intrigued with being able to control the fate of producing animals with excellent traits, and animals of purity, through mating, reproducing, etc., until he produced the perfect example. He used eugenics in his experiments (breeding animals with specific traits). The love of magical and mythical animals enthralled the Nazis. Those animals were elevated in status.
Animals are almost humanized in the Nazi world, and of course the humans, the Jews, are thought of and treated as less than impure animals by the Nazis. Experiments performed on Jews were abundant. From brain surgery to agonizing and tortuous experiments, the Jews were tools utilized. One has to read carefully in order to perceive what Ackerman is trying to accomplish.
Jews, the Polish resistance, the Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943, and then the Warsaw uprising of 1944, we are given a look at Warsaw daily life during the Nazi occupation, both the willing “prisoner’s and caged humans, and the unwilling Jews in prison camps. Life in the ghetto is depicted frankly and truthfully. The horrid and unsanitary conditions are explored and painted.
The perspective is almost incomparable, and the historical facts and documentations are gleaned from newspapers, witness accounts, Survivor stories, scientific research, and from Antonina’s diary, her incredible diary. Within the pages humor is reflected within living arrangements and lives inhabited within the confines. Man and animal live together, eat together, sleep together. Lives are saved by courageous and empathetic individuals. At times the book can be difficult to follow, and I found myself rereading excerpts due to the fluidity. Overall, Diane Ackerman weaves the tapestries together with excellence. Both the scientific and historic aspects work well together, and The Zookeeper’s Wife is brilliant in its illumination of Jan and Antonina Zabinski, their moral code, and their courage to save lives despite risking their own lives. The story binds the threads of an unusual perspective in this amazing Holocaust telling. What an accomplishment! Bravo!
Jan and Antonina Zabinski are honored by Yad Vashem’s The Righteous Among the Nations.
A Tranquil Star by Primo Levi
A Tranquil Star – Unpublished Stories, by Primo Levi is quite the collection of seventeen short stories within a 164 page count. Levi is well-known for his Holocaust memoirs, but in this book of short stories, he goes beyond the Holocaust, into the world of the his deep imagination, bringing us parables of the metaphysical order.
Levi has written in not so subtle words the reality of our world. We might initially not understand this collection of often horrid, bizarre and violent stories, but if we stop to think about what we are reading, it becomes clear that Levi is giving us issues to ponder. In the realm and reality of things, our world is filled with casual murders, robberies, bombings, people who look at death as entertainment, people with lack of esteem, individuals with huge egos unable to cope in a new land, and the acts and repercussions of war. Levi clearly, and with insight, has written about the humanity of our world, or, appropriately, the lack of humanity in some cases. The positives and negatives are entwined, in The Tranquil Star, to point of negativity often overcoming the positive.
If you take away nothing else from The Tranquil Star, you will see the inhumanity of individuals, the uncaring attitudes and unwillingness to bend towards being humane individuals. Levi’s insight is intense, his word images often much too descriptive (in the sense of his bringing horror to our minds), and his prose strong and vivid. Don’t get me wrong, there is lightness and humor in some of the stories, but the majority are a commentary on the universal flow. He wraps up the world, within short stories (some only six pages long), in a concise and descriptive manner, filling our eyes and minds with overwhelming visuals. The stories are a strong assessment of the fragility of our lives and world. Levi infuses the preciousness of humanity within the pages, even when the negative is strong. In my opinion that is Levi’s message…life is precious and fragile. Primo Levi was a masterful story teller, blending fantasy into the reality of our world, as we know it. The Tranquil Star is evidence of that.
~~BookDiva
Leave a comment
Filed under Authors, General, Non-Fiction
Tagged as A Tranquil Star, anti-semitism, Books, descriptive language, Family Dynamics, family relationships, fiction, fiction short stories, fiction stories, Italian Jewish Authors, Italian Jewish writers, Jew, Jewish, Jewish Authors, Jewish Italian Writers, Jewish Writers, Jews, metaphysical commentary stories, metaphysical stories, mountain hiking, prewar short stories, primitive life, Primo Levi, Primo Levi short stories, Primo Levi's A Tranquil Star, Religion, short stories, short stories on universe, short story commentary, short story fiction, stories