Book Club read by Irish for October
Jan and Antonina Zabinski were polish Christian zookeepers horrified by Nazi racism, who managed to save over three hundred people. Yet their story has fallen between the seams of history.
drawing on Antonina's diary and other historical sources, best-selling naturalist Diane Ackerman vividly re-creates Antonina's life as "the Zookeeper's Wife," responsible for her own family, the animals, and their 'Guests" - Resistance activsts and refugee Jews, many of whom Jan had smuggled from Warsaw Ghetto. Ironically, the empty zoo cages helped to hide scores of doomed people, who were code-named after the animals whose cages they occupied. Others hid in the nooks and crannies of the house itself.
Jan led a cell of sabotueors, and the Zabinskis young son risked his life carrying food to the Guests, while also tending an eccentric array of creatures in the house [pigs, hare, muskrat, foxes, and more.] With hidden people having animal names, and pet animals having human names, it's small wonder the zoo's code name became "The House Under a Crazy Star.
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