‘Zookeeper’s Wife’ and Shipwrecked Souls

Review by Bill Doughty––

In a village a circus lion suddenly died…

“The circus director asked a poor old Jewish man if he would pretend to be the lion, and the man agreed since he needed the money. The director said: ‘All you have to do is wear the lion’s fur and sit in the cage, and people will believe you’re a lion.’ And so the man did, muttering to himself, ‘What strange jobs I’ve had in my life,’ when his thoughts were interrupted by a noise. He turned just in time to see another lion creeping into his cage and fixing him with a hungry stare. Trembling, cowering, not knowing how to behave himself, the man did the only thing he could think of –– vociferously chant a Hebrew prayer. No sooner had he uttered the first desperate words, Shema Yisroel (Hear O Israel) … than the other lion lined in with adonai elohenu (The Lord our God), and the two would-be lions finished the prayer together.”

Zookeeper Jan Żabiński and real lion.

It’s an old folk story that Diane Ackerman heard as a young girl and shares in an introductory Author’s Note. And it’s a tale that became “oddly relevant” to the true story she tells in her amazing book, where art and storytelling come alive to become history.

“The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story” (W. W. Norton,  2007) is based on a true story in which brave people in Poland risked everything to help protect Polish Jews in World War II from the Nazis and the Holocaust. Like the lion-man in the folk story, “shipwrecked souls” eventually make their way to a zoo outside Warsaw for sanctuary.

And regarding relevance: Though the book was written in 2007 –– one year before Russia's Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia, seven years before he invaded Crimea, and 15 years before he began waging war in Ukraine –– readers in 2022 will likely think of Poland's role in Putin's current war in Ukraine as they read about what happened in Warsaw eight decades ago.

At first Ackerman lulls readers with her depiction of an idyllic human-animal bond, one of understanding, love, and respect for life. Innocence. Nature. Nurture. Peace. The pursuit of happiness in pre-war Warsaw. Ackerman beautifully depicts that world before the storm clouds of war start to destroy the way of life of the Żabiński family.

Antonina and family pet badger

Antonina Żabiński is the Zookeeper’s wife and a hero of this tale along with her husband, Jan, who served secretly with the Polish Underground to fight the Nazis. Ackerman dedicated the book “For Antonina and her family, human and animal.” The Żabiński matriarch helps manage the improbable zoo as well as schemes to hide and feed Jews they call “Guests.”

With the arrival of the Nazis, the sometimes-normal-occasional-calm of the zoo is shattered. Fascism brings iron-fisted and racist “law and order.” The Nazis build walls and deny freedom based on differences of religion and ethnicity. Casual cruelty leads inexorably to calculated genocide.

Ackerman depicts the banal evil of Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Hermann Goring, Eugene Fischer, and others who valued the lives of other animals over the humans they condemned to camps, ovens, and mass graves.

Ackerman writes in a “narrative history” style. Her embellishments are sometimes well beyond David McCullough’s interpretive style. Yet, like McCullough, she imparts cold hard history. In "The Zookeeper's Wife" she builds her storytelling around actual facts published or contained in interviews, news stories, and diaries, including the diary of Antonina.

“‘How can this barbarity be happening in the twentieth century?!!!!!!’ Antonina asked herself, an outcry of disbelief with no fewer than six exclamation points.” Antonina saw the war as a return to the Dark Ages. She and her family counter their horrors with efforts to help those who were targeted by the Nazis for destruction. Along with housing and feeding castaways, the Żabińskis participated in a plot to feed Jewish residents in the Ghetto.

The Warsaw zoo helped make animal-human connections in 1938, before the arrival of the Nazis.

After most of the animals in their zoo were removed, released, or killed by the Nazis, the Żabińskis turned their enterprise into a pig farm. They secretly transported meat into the Ghetto. “If it felt a little off-color giving Jews pork, a taboo food, dietary laws had long since been waived, and everyone was grateful for protein, a scarce gift on either side of the wall,” Ackerman observes.

Such humanism and such audacity –– helping targeted victims of the Nazis –– was extremely risky.

“Unlike other occupied countries, where hiding Jews could land you in prison, in Poland harboring a Jew was punishable by immediate death to the rescuer and also to the rescuer’s family and neighbors, in a death-frenzy deemed ‘collective responsibility.’ Nonetheless, many hospital workers disguised adult Jews as nurses, drugged small children to quiet them before smuggling them out in knapsacks, and planted people in funeral carts under a heap of corpses. Many Christian Poles hid Jewish friends for the whole length of the war, even though it meant reduced rations and relentless vigilance and ingenuity. Any extra food entering the house, unfamiliar silhouettes, or whispers seeping from a cellar or closet might inspire a visiting neighbor to notify the police or tip off the city’s underbelly of blackmailers. The wayfarers often spent years in the dark, barely able to move, and when they finally emerged, unfolding their limbs, their weak muscles failed and they needed to be carried like a ventriloquist’s dummies.”

Diane Ackerman

Ackerman, author of “The Whale by Moonlight,” “Natural History of the Senses,” and “Dawn Light,” writes with heartbreaking brilliance of “The unbearable weight of Ghetto life.” Not surprisingly, her words include these metaphors of nature and the sea.

“During this time of seismic upheaval, more and more Ghetto dwellers washed up on the deck of the villa, arriving weatherbeaten, ‘like shipwrecked souls,’ Antonina wrote in her diary. ‘We felt that our house wasn’t a light, flimsy boat dancing on high waves, but a Captain Nemo’s submarine gliding through deep ocean on its journey to a safe port.’ Meanwhile, the war storm blew violently, scaring all, and ‘casting a shadow on the lives of our Guests, who fled from the entrance of crematoriums and the thresholds of gas chambers,’ needing more than refuge. ‘They desperately needed hope that a safe haven even existed, that the war’s horrors would one day end,’ while they drifted along in the strange villa even its owners referred to as an ark.”

Navy readers and their families who choose to read this book will identify with the core values of the Żabiński family: honor, courage, and commitment.

There is a familiar ethos in the character of the men, women, and children who participated in rescuing victims of the Nazis. Ackerman writes:

“Rescuers tended to be decisive, fast-thinking, risk-taking, independent, adventurous, openhearted, rebellious, and usually flexible –– able to switch plans, abandon habits, or change ingrained routines at a moment’s notice. They tended to be nonconformists, and though many rescuers held solemn principles worth dying for, they didn’t regard themselves as heroic. Typically, one would say, as Jan did: ‘I only did my duty –– if you can save somebody’s life, it’s your duty to try.’ Or: ‘We did it because it was the right thing to do.'"

Antonina had to deal with Nazis who invaded her home and threatened her; then she had to confront Russians who came to liberate Poland but tried to take what wasn’t theirs. Her inner strength, voice, and instincts proved to be all too powerful.

This is another treasured find I discovered in a used book store. It is also a book that gives a hopeful view of the human spirit, strength in resilience, and the power of righteousness in time of war.

Ackerman and W. W. Norton include comprehensive “details,” a bibliography, and index. The paperback version I scored comes with a “reading group guide” and list of other books with similar group guides. Blurbs are from an impressive list of reviewers, with standouts for me by Dava Sobel (“Longitude”), Jared Diamond (“Guns, Germs, and Steel”), and Donna Seaman of Los Angeles Times.

The Żabińskis in Warsaw, Poland, saved 300 Jews.

As of the autumn of 2022, Poland has accepted at least 1.4 million refugees who fled Ukraine due to Putin’s war and campaign of terrorism against civilians. This week, during a Russian missile onslaught against Ukraine, a Ukrainian defensive missile exploded on a grain farm in the rural village of Przewodow, five miles within Poland's border, killing two people. NATO nations, including the United States, met to consider additional options to deal with Russia’s continued aggression.