The truth is far more complex than that: Antonina, who eyed two terrified lynx kits and understood how to coax them into security, emerges as the opposite of all the Nazis bring with them to Warsaw. It would have been tempting in a tale like this to reach for the obvious metaphor of Jews animalized, hiding in cages from Nazi persecutors. In spite of the carnage around them, the Żabińskis saved the lives of approximately three hundred Polish Jews - ironically, in a space created partially by the German drive toward eugenics. sometimes even almost happy,” with music in the evenings, the few animals the family could continue to keep, and, mostly, Antonina herself, a woman who served sit-down meals, analyzed in her diaries the emotional needs of her guests, and refused to lose her sense of connection to the world. Unlike the depressing bunkers where many Jews hid, Antonina wrote in her diary that “the atmosphere in our house was quite pleasant. Tense with the threat of discovery at a time and place when giving a Jew water was punishable by death, the zoo under the Żabińskis nonetheless remained a place alive. … The best camouflage for people is more people, so the Żabińskis invited a stream of legal visitors - uncles, aunts, cousins, and friends for varying stays - and established a regular unpredictability.” Ackerman shows how critical the couple’s keen sense of predator-prey relationships became at this stage: “In the wild, animals inherit clever tricks of blending into their surroundings. Some guests stayed in the zoo’s villa and some in the emptied cages. “In the summer of 1940, a phone call, a note, or a whisper might alert the Żabińskis to expect secret ‘Guests’ placed by the Underground,” writes Ackerman. In Warsaw, Poland’s surrender meant the single-minded persecution of the Jewish population, but in emptying the zoo, the Nazis unwittingly created a sanctuary in the center of the city. Thus conquered zoos saw their animals shipped off for display and breeding experiments. Architects of the Reich theorized that by “back-breeding” - breeding animals with the most visible archaic traits - extinct animals such as tarpans (wild horses) and aurochs (cattle) could be recreated. Not only did the ideology of the Third Reich demand the creation of human racial purity - an Aryan race spilling over into the lebensraum or “living space” created by the deaths of millions of Jews, Gypsies, and ultimately Slavs and other races - but also an animal purity. When war broke out, however, a German zookeeper seized the Żabińskis’ valuable animals. The Żabińskis’ was a world preoccupied by zoo births, deaths, and arrivals. Many animals roamed the zoo grounds freely or loped through the villa she and Jan shared. In pre-war Warsaw, Antonina Żabiński and her husband Jan ran a zoo housing rare animals, many of them raised by hand by Antonina, who had a rare gift for connecting with the creatures in her care. It’s a tribute to her talents that the book feels both triumphant and inevitable by the last page. A tireless researcher, Ackerman is nonetheless a writer who luxuriates in sensory exploration and metaphor - making her a less-than-obvious choice to tackle a true story of the Second World War. There's also a fair amount of smoking (accurate for the era) and drinking.At first glance, Diane Ackerman’s The Zookeeper’s Wife seems quite a departure from her other books, such as the best-selling A Natural History of the Senses. While there's no strong language to worry about, characters do embrace passionately, and sex is implied (a naked breast is briefly seen). There are many moments of tension and fear, but characters also show compassion and courage in the face of tremendous odds. People are executed, animals are shot, and Jews are rounded up in the Warsaw ghetto and later placed on trains bound for concentration camps. A teen girl is raped by Nazi soldiers (the act itself isn't shown, but viewers see her being taken away and then beaten and bloody after the fact).
Expect many disturbing scenes of wartime carnage and destruction - including bombings, battles, explosions, and shootings. Jessica Chastain stars as Antonina Zabinski, who, with her husband, Jan (Johan Heldenbergh), turned their zoo into a different kind of sanctuary during the Nazis' occupation of their city. Parents need to know that The Zookeeper's Wife is an intense, sometimes-brutal drama based on the true story (which inspired Diane Ackerman's same-named book) of a couple who helped save hundreds of Warsaw Jews during World War II.