The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story

April 19, 1943, marks the first of two uprisings in Warsaw. Heinrich Himmler wants to give Hitler a special birthday “present”: the elimination of all the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. When German troops show up to kill any remaining Jews, they encounter 1500 armed Jewish fighters, who keep them at bay until May 16. Describing the uprising, the author writes, “As everyone at the villa followed news of the Ghetto uprising, Antonina recorded their mood as electrified, stunned, helpless, proud” (202).

An additional family of four Jewish friends of Antonina’s appears at the villa, the Kenigsweins. Obviously suffering the effects of the occupation, this family requires the kind of special care Antonina is so well-known for.

Ackerman focuses on the emotion of this time. Antonina and Jan feel a mixture of joy at having been able to help so many and immense pain for the many more who have been lost.

The author focuses on the extreme lengths some Polish people went to in providing refuge for the fugitive Jews they assisted. Some rescuers went so far as to provide separate dishes for those Jews who kept kosher. There were teachers who trained Jews to mimic Christians perfectly. Jewish features were changed through makeup; their accents were changed; their clothing was changed; they learned how not to appear to be Jewish at all. It was even possible to make Jewish men appear not to be circumcised.

Antonina’s health improves, but she is not yet ready to resume all her duties. She continues to host many new Jewish families. This means that Ryś interacts with Jewish boys, including saboteurs. She discovers that Ryś and another boy have concocted a plot to lure German soldiers to the munition storage Nazis keep on the zoo compound, and then set off a bomb to kill them. She enlists Jan to take Ryś aside and explain that this will endanger everyone. Jan explains to Ryś that, though he is a soldier, he is under Jan’s command and must not act alone without orders from his father.

Antonina emerges from her bed, though she is scarcely able to resume her duties. The Guests watch over her and criticize Jan for not being more gentle and compassionate with her.

One day, a fire starts in the haystack near where the Germans store their supplies at the zoo compound. Antonina rushes out and watches as another building catches fire. A German officer arrives and demands to know what has happened, assuming this is an attack. Calmly, Antonina tells him that German soldiers climb onto the haystack with their girlfriends and one of them must have left a cigarette burning that caught the hay on fire. She uses this observation to open a casual conversation that disarms him, the additional soldiers who arrive, and even the Gestapo officer who calls to inquire.

When Jan listens to this story at the supper table that evening, he remarks that this is Antonina’s great talent: She has the power to form instant, strong emotional bonds with animals and people, calming them and enabling them to trust her.

The Nazi occupiers tighten their search for Jews hiding among the Polish population in 1943. Because the Żabińskis have heard someone has spotted Magdalena at the villa and commented about it, they realize that the Gestapo might be watching them. They send some of their guests to other melinas to keep them safe. The author writes, “[…] as zookeepers, the Żabińskis understood both vigilance and predators; in a swamp of vipers, one planned every footstep” (234).

Though many in Warsaw act courageously and selflessly to protect their Jewish neighbors from Nazi persecution, there are others who try to profit from the situation, turning in Jews for reward money or extorting them by threatening to turn them in. Ackerman reports on clever civil servants who understand how to create false documents while maintaining an air of innocence. The German bureaucrats themselves estimate that “15 percent of all identity cards and 25 percent of all working papers in Warsaw had been forged” (236). The Jewish underground also begins to keep a registry of the movements of Jews so that their history can be recovered.

On a warm May night, Jan directs two boys from the Underground—legendary saboteurs—to hide in the pheasant house, among the rabbits Ryś cares for. The next morning, when Ryś arrives to feed the rabbits, he discovers the sleeping boys. Over the next three weeks, Ryś becomes fast friends with the boys, who tell him many of their exploits. When the time comes for the two boys to be on their way, Ryś discovers that they have disappeared without telling him goodbye. Ryś is hurt by this, feeling that his friends have deserted him. This also breaks Antonina’s heart, since it is another secret her son must keep.

As the momentum of the war turns away from Germany, the Żabińskis face many complex, dangerous situations. During the brutal winter of 1943, Ryś ends up in the hospital with pneumonia. The president of Warsaw decides that it would be a good thing to reopen the zoo and invites Jan to send him a proposal about what it would require. Though Jan yearns to restart the zoo, he realizes that would send the wrong message to the citizens of Warsaw. Cleverly, he sidesteps the president’s offer. Another bureaucrat writes a letter saying Jan must be fired. Jan’s colleague, Kulski, intercepts the letter, which would have ended their underground work and robbed the family of a place to live. Instead, Kulski reassigns Jan’s duties.

Shortly after this episode, Jan is summoned to the private residence of the governor of Poland. He assumes that he will be arrested, but discovers instead that the residence is infested with snakes. After demonstrating that the snakes are not venomous, he returns home unharmed. Later, Nazi guards stop Jan as he is walking home with two guns in his backpack, hidden beneath a dead rabbit. Seeing only the rabbit, they send him on his way.

It is nearly time for Antonina to give birth to her second child, and, desiring to take a warm bath, she visits the home of some friends. While Antonina is there, the home is raided by Nazi guards. Because her friend has German memorabilia all around the living room and speaks highly of Germany, Antonina is not arrested. The new baby, Teresa, comes into the world. Everyone around the family believes the baby is an omen of good things to come.

As the Germans begin to retreat, the Polish Home Army leaders plan a revolt to liberate Warsaw. Jan recognizes that their timing is off: They should have started the uprising one week earlier. He gives a pistol to Antonina as he departs. As the fighting commences, at first it seems that the remaining Germans will be cast out of the city. After several days, however, Hitler hears about the Warsaw Uprising and sends a large force of SS soldiers.

Antonina is left alone at the zoo with just a few boys, the fox man, and her women helpers. For 23 days, she waits to hear some word of what is happening. Two Nazi soldiers show up at the zoo, calling out Antonina and everyone else who is there. After threatening everyone, they take first one of the fox man’s young helpers and then Ryś around the building where they cannot be seen and discharge their pistols three times. Antonina believes her son has been shot. Then, the soldiers order the boys to come back around to the front of the house, bringing with them a dead chicken they shot. The soldiers think this is hilarious, while the villa residents are devastated.

Once the Germans pull out, the Russians enter Warsaw. A small group of Russian soldiers charges into the villa, beginning to load their pockets with anything they want. One of them starts to take the medallion Antonina wears around her neck. Because she speaks Russian, she tells them to stop. Shocked at her words, the leader orders the others to depart, putting back everything they started to steal. Antonina thinks, “If felt words like mother, wife, sister, have the power to change a b******’s spirit and conquer his murderous instincts, maybe there’s some hope for the future of humanity after all” (276).

In another moment of absurdity, a German officer enters the villa and demands that Antonina play the piano for him. After searching about for the music he wants to hear, she ends up playing “The Star Spangled Banner,” with the German singing the words in English.

As the Germans redouble their efforts to defeat the Polish Home Army, fighting around the villa becomes very intense. With the help of the fox man, who has an old truck, Antonina and Ryś load up what possessions they can, and they retreat first to Lowicz, and then to the village of Marywil. There, they stay in a schoolhouse. Believing they have lost everything that was precious and will never see their home again, Antonina despairs and Ryś grows depressed. After 63 days, the Warsaw uprising ends with the arrest of the surviving Polish fighters. Ackerman writes, “Hitler celebrated by ordering Germany’s churches to ring their bells for a week solid” (287).

Throughout the two months of the uprising, Antonina hears nothing from Jan. Now she learns that soldiers are being sent to labor camps and she tries to write the different camps, searching for Jan. She does not know that Jan has been shot in the neck and sent to the hospital, where it is assumed he will die. Instead, he makes a full recovery, though he is still in a prison camp.

Antonina, Ryś, and the baby celebrate Christmas in Marywil with an elderly couple who have opened their home to them. Antonina receives the best Christmas present when her hostess, Mrs. Kokot, bicycles home from the post office, waving a letter in the air. It contains a caricature drawn by Jan of himself in the prison camp, revealing that he is alive and well, though disgruntled.

After the first of the year, news comes that the Germans are in full retreat and Poland is no longer occupied. Though Antonina wishes to remain in the little schoolhouse, students need it to begin their studies again. She gathers up her children and a few possessions and manages to get rides with different trucks back to Warsaw. Ackerman writes, “What she saw dazed and sickened her, she wrote, because, despite rumors, warnings, and eyewitness reports, she still wasn’t prepared for a city in tatters” (294).

Though they have a place to stay and store their possessions, Antonina and Ryś go to the zoo compound. Though the entire compound has been heavily damaged, they discover that the villa is still standing. They realize that, though the life they had before the war will not return, they will neither forget all that they loved, nor will they fail to rebuild.

The author uses this chapter to resolve the stories of many of the characters who appear throughout the narrative. Magdala and Maurycy marry when the war is over. Visitors to Warsaw find a city with only one-third of its residents present and living in “crypts, caverns Cellars and subterranean shelters” (299), though hard at work rebuilding their homes.

Jan at last returns from prison camp in the spring of 1946. He begins working to rebuild the zoo the next year, and in 1949 the zoo reopens, primarily with animals donated by local citizens. Because he now has to deal with Soviet authorities who do not like former underground fighters, Jan retires two years later, at 54. Though he no longer directs the zoo, he continues to work, running a radio broadcast and penning 50 books about zoology. Antonina writes books for children while caring for her own two children and staying in touch with many of the guests she and her husband helped during the war.

Ryś, a civil engineer, lives in Warsaw today. His sister Teresa lives in Denmark.

The final chapter begins with the description of a wild forest in northeastern Poland, where many of the rare animals that were kept at the Warsaw Zoo now live in their natural setting. Ackerman reflects on some of the historical figures who found inspiration from this forest, including the Nazi leaders for whom its vision of unspoiled nature became part of their racist mythology. She asks, “What’s so awe-inspiring about this landscape that it could bewitch people from many cultures and eras, including Lutz Heck, Goring, and Hitler” (310). Then the author concludes, “There are many forms of obsession, some diabolical, some fortuitous” (313).

After describing the beauty of the forest, the author turns her attention to present-day Warsaw which she describes as a place that is continuing to rebuild, having survived not only the Nazis but also Communists. She notes that those who rebuilt the city used as much of its original material as possible. She writes, “I reached the small square and a black pillar emblazoned with a mermaid wielding a sword—Warsaw’s symbol. It’s a chimera I think Antonina would have identified with: a defender half woman, half animal” (315).

The Details section contains notes that reflect back on previous chapters. In many cases, Ackerman provides the references from which she drew information. Occasionally, she elaborates on previous texts or explains her comments.