The Zookeeper's Wife
Diane Ackerman is the author of this book and she wrote this book off of a lot of research and the memoir of Antonina Zabinski. Antonina also interviewed the Zabinksis, too.
The Zookeeper's Wife is a book about two Polish people who have great empathy towards people. The Zookeeper's owners are Jan Zabinksi, and his wife, Antonina Zabinski. They both live in Warsaw, on the Warsaw Zoo. The Zabinski's have two children, Rys and Teresa. However, Teresa was born during the war.
Warsaw got bombed many times in 1939. The bombs killed the majority of the animals in the zoo leaving Antonina and Jan really upset. Lutz Heck, the Berlin Zoo owner, took the remaining animals and shipped them. As the war kept going more and more Jews escaped the Warsaw Ghetto and needing a place to hide. Many people non-Jewish people didn't hide because if they got caught they would have been killed immediately. The Warsaw Ghetto is a area closed in by a wall that all Jews are held in. The atmosphere isn't healthy at all. People, mainly kids, are starving to death, homeless. Diseases are spreading, everyone is starving, and there is no one of getting.
Jan Zabinski meets a friend involved with the doctors that go in the Ghetto. Jan takes advantage of that and goes inside the Ghetto. He smuggles Jewish friends out of the Ghetto with fake papers and hides them in his villa and empty animal cages. With the help of his wife, Antonina, she prepared all the "guests" and where they would stay. Antonina and Rys would deliver food to the "guests", or the hiding Jews, in the empty animals cages. The zoo got a little extra food for cheaper to feed the "animals", but really the Zabinski's feed the Jews. That is also why the Zabinski's named the humans animal names and animals human names. They had a housekeeper who didn't know about the hiding Jews, so they had to call the people in the empty animal cages by a code which was animal names.
Not only did Antonina and Jan save about three hundred Jews, they also helped many animals. Any animal that wander in the backyard, they brought in and took care of them. Sometime Jan would get Rys a hamster and a rabbit and Rys will be so happy and he'll have something to do all day when gun shots were constantly going off. Rys was young to understand everything, but he didn't think so. He hated being treated like a kid. Antonina as kid grew up during war and her parents died during the war, so she didn't want Rys to be affected like she was. Antonina also had her second child, Teresa.
Jan was drafted to the war twice. Both times he survived. Jan was separated from Antonina, Rys, and Teresa. The family thought Jan was dead, but amazingly he survived. During the uprising of Warsaw, Jan had to fight. Antonina, Rys, and Teresa moved to the other town with a friend and when they returned home everything that was in their was stollen, but they were happy their villa was still standing. They build up their home and sometimes the Jews came back and thanked them.
A few years after the war Jan and Antonina started up the zoo again. Lutz Heck even shipped back the rare animals he took.
The Zookeeper's Wife is a book about two Polish people who have great empathy towards people. The Zookeeper's owners are Jan Zabinksi, and his wife, Antonina Zabinski. They both live in Warsaw, on the Warsaw Zoo. The Zabinski's have two children, Rys and Teresa. However, Teresa was born during the war.
Warsaw got bombed many times in 1939. The bombs killed the majority of the animals in the zoo leaving Antonina and Jan really upset. Lutz Heck, the Berlin Zoo owner, took the remaining animals and shipped them. As the war kept going more and more Jews escaped the Warsaw Ghetto and needing a place to hide. Many people non-Jewish people didn't hide because if they got caught they would have been killed immediately. The Warsaw Ghetto is a area closed in by a wall that all Jews are held in. The atmosphere isn't healthy at all. People, mainly kids, are starving to death, homeless. Diseases are spreading, everyone is starving, and there is no one of getting.
Jan Zabinski meets a friend involved with the doctors that go in the Ghetto. Jan takes advantage of that and goes inside the Ghetto. He smuggles Jewish friends out of the Ghetto with fake papers and hides them in his villa and empty animal cages. With the help of his wife, Antonina, she prepared all the "guests" and where they would stay. Antonina and Rys would deliver food to the "guests", or the hiding Jews, in the empty animals cages. The zoo got a little extra food for cheaper to feed the "animals", but really the Zabinski's feed the Jews. That is also why the Zabinski's named the humans animal names and animals human names. They had a housekeeper who didn't know about the hiding Jews, so they had to call the people in the empty animal cages by a code which was animal names.
Not only did Antonina and Jan save about three hundred Jews, they also helped many animals. Any animal that wander in the backyard, they brought in and took care of them. Sometime Jan would get Rys a hamster and a rabbit and Rys will be so happy and he'll have something to do all day when gun shots were constantly going off. Rys was young to understand everything, but he didn't think so. He hated being treated like a kid. Antonina as kid grew up during war and her parents died during the war, so she didn't want Rys to be affected like she was. Antonina also had her second child, Teresa.
Jan was drafted to the war twice. Both times he survived. Jan was separated from Antonina, Rys, and Teresa. The family thought Jan was dead, but amazingly he survived. During the uprising of Warsaw, Jan had to fight. Antonina, Rys, and Teresa moved to the other town with a friend and when they returned home everything that was in their was stollen, but they were happy their villa was still standing. They build up their home and sometimes the Jews came back and thanked them.
A few years after the war Jan and Antonina started up the zoo again. Lutz Heck even shipped back the rare animals he took.