The Deadly Game of Hide and Seek
Find the "lowly," take them home,
Never let their souls be known.
Give them hope and food and bed.
Hope and pray they're not shot dead.
Diane Ackerman's novel, The Zookeeper's Wife, is yet another phenomenal and true story taking place during World War II. What once was a perfect paradise quickly became a war zone, graveyard, and ultimately a shelter that saved many.
In Poland - the setting of the novel - lives a family of three humans and a ton of animals. A zookeeper, his wife, and their young son surround themselves with the many exotic and fascinating animals of their Warsaw Zoo in Poland. As the story unravels with the progression of the war and Nazi occupation, the reader feels as though hidden in the shadows along with the many Jewish escapees who were snuck out of the ghettos by the zookeeper or on the run from German soldiers. The story is amazingly realistic in the sense that the reader feels the tension, heat, and anxiety the characters feel in some of the most intense moments of this story.
Ackerman's book is one that will leave you haunted with the passing of chapters, as animals' lives are taken, as hearts are broken, as worry eats the family and their hidden friends with every German word spoken outside the house.
What makes this novel so unique is the fact that all the emotions of the main character - the zookeeper's wife - were actual emotions expressed by the real woman of whom Ackerman writes. In D.T. Max's New York Times article, Antonina's List, Max further explains how Antonina (the zookeeper's wife) wrote in her diary through the duration of the war and Nazi rule, keeping details about how she felt and the events that passed by in those years. In Max's article, he describes The Zookeeper's Wife, as "an absorbing book, diminished sometimes by the choppy way Ackerman balances Antonina's account with the larger story of the Warsaw Holocaust."
This perspective is fairly accurate. Ackerman's use of telling two stories, one of history and one of a personal account, see-saws back and forth as the two stories of the war and Antonina swap and intersect over the course of the novel, melding into one large series of events.
From my personal experience, reading this novel was a delight because of the high level of content and real quotations squeezed in the pages from Antonina herself. On the other hand, the high level of content, for those who are not as intrigued by the minuscule details of the many (and I do mean many) animals in Antonina's zoo, in some of the chapters can really drudge along at a glacial pace.
All in all, the stories shared in this novel make the reader understand the terrifying perspective of the victims, especially the people forced to watch the cruelty of Nazi occupation and risk their lives saving those of innocence. The measures Antonina, her husband, and their young son (witnessing all the horrors of war at such an early age) took to rescue and hide the Jewish people they could sneak past the Germans and protect in their zoo were remarkable. Hidden underground passageways from the main house to animal shelters and secret piano songs played when the coast was clear for her guests to emerge from their shadows were just two of the many precautions one family took to help, what Max notes was, 300 victims of Nazi occupation.
As Antonina's character stated in the film, The Zookeeper's Wife: "No one knows how hard it is, a life in hidding. You can never tell who your enemies are, or who to trust. Maybe that's why I love animals so much. You look in their eyes, and you know exactly what's in their hearts."
Never let their souls be known.
Give them hope and food and bed.
Hope and pray they're not shot dead.
Diane Ackerman's novel, The Zookeeper's Wife, is yet another phenomenal and true story taking place during World War II. What once was a perfect paradise quickly became a war zone, graveyard, and ultimately a shelter that saved many.
In Poland - the setting of the novel - lives a family of three humans and a ton of animals. A zookeeper, his wife, and their young son surround themselves with the many exotic and fascinating animals of their Warsaw Zoo in Poland. As the story unravels with the progression of the war and Nazi occupation, the reader feels as though hidden in the shadows along with the many Jewish escapees who were snuck out of the ghettos by the zookeeper or on the run from German soldiers. The story is amazingly realistic in the sense that the reader feels the tension, heat, and anxiety the characters feel in some of the most intense moments of this story.
 |
| This image of Nazi-occupied Warsaw, Poland is provided by Kelly Short. |
Ackerman's book is one that will leave you haunted with the passing of chapters, as animals' lives are taken, as hearts are broken, as worry eats the family and their hidden friends with every German word spoken outside the house.
What makes this novel so unique is the fact that all the emotions of the main character - the zookeeper's wife - were actual emotions expressed by the real woman of whom Ackerman writes. In D.T. Max's New York Times article, Antonina's List, Max further explains how Antonina (the zookeeper's wife) wrote in her diary through the duration of the war and Nazi rule, keeping details about how she felt and the events that passed by in those years. In Max's article, he describes The Zookeeper's Wife, as "an absorbing book, diminished sometimes by the choppy way Ackerman balances Antonina's account with the larger story of the Warsaw Holocaust."
This perspective is fairly accurate. Ackerman's use of telling two stories, one of history and one of a personal account, see-saws back and forth as the two stories of the war and Antonina swap and intersect over the course of the novel, melding into one large series of events.
From my personal experience, reading this novel was a delight because of the high level of content and real quotations squeezed in the pages from Antonina herself. On the other hand, the high level of content, for those who are not as intrigued by the minuscule details of the many (and I do mean many) animals in Antonina's zoo, in some of the chapters can really drudge along at a glacial pace.
All in all, the stories shared in this novel make the reader understand the terrifying perspective of the victims, especially the people forced to watch the cruelty of Nazi occupation and risk their lives saving those of innocence. The measures Antonina, her husband, and their young son (witnessing all the horrors of war at such an early age) took to rescue and hide the Jewish people they could sneak past the Germans and protect in their zoo were remarkable. Hidden underground passageways from the main house to animal shelters and secret piano songs played when the coast was clear for her guests to emerge from their shadows were just two of the many precautions one family took to help, what Max notes was, 300 victims of Nazi occupation.
As Antonina's character stated in the film, The Zookeeper's Wife: "No one knows how hard it is, a life in hidding. You can never tell who your enemies are, or who to trust. Maybe that's why I love animals so much. You look in their eyes, and you know exactly what's in their hearts."
 |
| This image of two elephants from Warsaw Zoo in 2007 is provided by Ewelina Korzeniowska. |
Comments
Post a Comment