Book Review/Movie Review: The Zookeeper's Wife - A War Story

The recent Russian invasion of Ukraine has called to mind World War II for many Europeans, so I thought this was as good of a time as any other for a review of this book club favorite.  The Zookeeper's Wife, by Diane Ackerman, is the story of Antonina Zabinkska, who, along with her husband, Jan, had overseen the Warsaw Zoo in the years leading up to the onslaught of World War II.  The invasion of Poland marked the beginning of the war, making the people of Warsaw some of the first foreign victims of the Nazi regime.  The Zabinkskas were not Jewish, but they were not immune to the horrors of the invasion.  In the immediate aftermath of the Nazi raid, which severely damaged their zoo and home, many of their animals were confiscated by the Germans for transfer to the zoos of Germany.  The remaining animals are shot for sport by the Nazis.

It's at that point (fairly early on in the book) that this ceases to be an animal story.  The Zabinskas are stripped of their animals, but are left in possession of the empty zoo.  With all of its barns and dens and other buildings, it proves to be an ideal hiding space for many of Warsaw's Jews, who find themselves subjected to increasingly brutal treatment from the Germans, culminating in their expulsion of the concentration camps.  At no small risk to themselves, the Antonina and Jan work to save as many of their neighbors as possible, smuggling them into the zoo (which they have to go through a tremendous effort to keep occupancy of during the war) until they can find safer, more permanent shelter elsewhere.  Meanwhile, largely unbeknownst to Antonia, her zoo-director husband actively participates in the Polish underground, assisting in more direct resistance against the occupiers.

I was much less impressed with the movie, staring Jessica Chastain as Antonina and Johan Heldenbergh as Jan.  I always dislike it when filmmakers decide that history isn't interesting enough and needs a lot of embellishment.  In this case, the embellishment is most prominent in the form of Lutz Heck, Director of the Berlin Zoo.  In real life, it was Heck who took the best animals of Warsaw back to Germany ("For safekeeping," he assured the Zabinkskas); he was an ally of the Reich (best known for his efforts to breed back "pure" Germanic animals, such as aurochs) and not an especially sympathetic character.  For those who only know him though the movie, however, I feel the need to point out that he did not, in fact, try to rape Antonina, murder her young son, or most of the other evil deeds that the filmmakers attribute to him.

As most books about World War II (and especially those relating to the experience of Jews under the Nazi regime) tend to be, this is a book fraught with emotion.  The author does seem to have a tendency to go on tangents, which don't always improve the flow or readability of the book.  In some cases they prove worthwhile - providing backstories, and thus better humanizing, the various people that the Zabinkskas rescue.  In other cases, they seem to serve no purpose and it takes a while to filter back to the actual story.  If anything, I enjoyed this book for reasons which came to find during the current troubles in Europe.  After someone made a post in one of the zookeeper Facebook groups outlining the plight of Ukrainian zoos, they were (somewhat rudely, I thought) called out by a group member (not sure if she's an actual keeper or not) about how insensitive it was to worry about animals when people are in danger.  

First, if we only worry about animals when people aren't in danger, then we'll never worry about animals.  Secondly, as The Zookeeper's Wife reminds me, often it's the people who care the most about animals who also manage to care the most about people.

The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story, at Amazon.com