I don't quite recall why I picked up The Zookeeper's Wife, but I am pleased that I did. I don't generally read non-fiction, but I had just finished The Nightengale a fictional account of the activities during the Nazi occupation; Paris and France. The Zookeeper's Wife, is set in Poland, primarily in the national zoo in Warsaw.

I expect that nearly everyone alive is aware on a superficial level of the devastation of Warsaw. Warsaw had a very large Jewish population so as one might expect Hitler's mania against anyone who wasn't him fell heavily in Warsaw. Jan and Antonina Zabinski ran the zoo and were responsible for saving an estimated 300 Jews from the death that so many suffered. Jan gave his wife Antonina much of the credit, but I expect she would say that same of him. Given that, it was Antonina that did much of the day to day work of not only caring for the animals that remained after the occupation, but keeping her 'guests' alive by feeding them and moving them around like pieces on a chessboard.

Ms. Ackerman tells of many of the frightening, curious, and even humorous events she and her extended family experienced. She also makes some observations that I found enlightening in the conciseness. One in particular on the bottom of page 239 in which she states that it is interesting that wild animals can learn to put aside their anger in a few months of cohabitation with humans while humans have been trying to coexist for millennia without demonstrating an inability to be less than the most vicious beast. Read the quote, it is better.

I expect to get the movie today, but I already expect to be disappointed.

Read the book. You will be enlightened.