The Zoo Keeper’s Wife: A Polish Woman’s War Memoir

In September 1939, Germany launched its “Blitzkrieg” against Poland. Bombers destroyed Warsaw, and with it the Warsaw Zoo's once-idyllic way of life. Jan, the zoo's director, was active on the front lines of the Polish underground resistance. He and his wife, Antonina, took advantage of the Nazis' fascination with primitive ecosystems and rare animals to shelter more than 300 Jews in vacant animal enclosures, transforming the ruins of the zoo into an “Ark of Noah” between German-occupied Warsaw and the Jewish ghetto, between life and death, between light and darkness. Even in hell, nature, art, animals, and love can heal wounds and redeem the soul. With graceful, delicate prose, nature writer Diane Ackerman brings to life a moving story of people and animals relying on one another and fighting side by side amid war, together protecting the miracle of life.