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. 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.