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    Summary and Analysis of The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story: Based on the Book by Diane Ackerman
    Summary and Analysis of The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story: Based on the Book by Diane Ackerman
    Summary and Analysis of The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story: Based on the Book by Diane Ackerman
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    Summary and Analysis of The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story: Based on the Book by Diane Ackerman

    By Worth Books

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    So much to read, so little time? This brief overview of The Zookeeper’s Wife tells you what you need to know—before or after you read Diane Ackerman’s book.

    Crafted and edited with care, Worth Books set the standard for quality and give you the tools you need to be a well-informed reader.
     
    This short summary and analysis of The Zookeeper’s Wife includes:
    • Historical context
    • Chapter-by-chapter overviews
    • Profiles of the main characters
    • Detailed timeline of key events
    • Important quotes
    • Fascinating trivia
    • Glossary of terms
    • Supporting material to enhance your understanding of the original work
    About The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman:
     
    The Zookeeper’s Wife is the story of two unsung heroes of World War II: Jan and Antonina Żabiński, Polish zookeepers who risked their lives to rescue Jews from death at the hands of the Nazis. The heroic couple hid more than three hundred fugitives in their home and in the empty animal cages of the Warsaw Zoo.
     
    Diane Ackerman vividly evokes the extreme brutality and heroism that defined WWII-era Poland. The Zookeeper’s Wife is a testament to the bravery of those who resisted tyranny through radical compassion.
     
    The summary and analysis in this ebook are intended to complement your reading experience and bring you closer to a great work of nonfiction.
     
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateApr 4, 2017
    ISBN9781504021883
    Summary and Analysis of The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story: Based on the Book by Diane Ackerman
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      Book preview

      Summary and Analysis of The Zookeeper's Wife - Worth Books

      Contents

      Context

      Overview

      Summary

      Timeline

      Cast of Characters

      Direct Quotes and Analysis

      Trivia

      What’s That Word?

      Critical Response

      About Diane Ackerman

      For Your Information

      Bibliography

      Copyright

      Context

      History remembers World War II as a period of unspeakable atrocities in Europe—perhaps nowhere more so than in Poland, where German occupying forces built their extermination camps, enslaved ethnic Poles, and murdered over three million Polish Jews. In The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story, Diane Ackerman tells a tale of extraordinary heroism amidst the horrors of German-occupied Warsaw. After the 1939 German invasion of Poland, zookeepers Jan and Antonina Żabiński converted their bomb-ravaged zoo into a haven for refugees, sometimes hiding their illegal Guests in the zoo’s empty animal cages. Over the course of the war, the Żabińskis saved more than three hundred people from the Nazis.

      The German occupation of Poland was long and brutal. Germany planned to clear the country of its inhabitants and resettle the land with Germans. In the first few years of the war, the SS rounded up Warsaw’s 400,000 Jews and forced them into a walled Ghetto. Many of those who survived years in the Warsaw Ghetto perished in one of several death camps outside the city. Under the occupational government’s race-based laws, a Pole caught helping a Jew—even with something as small as a scrap of food—faced his own execution, as well as the execution of his entire family. Even still, Poland was the site of one of the largest anti-Nazi resistance movements in all of Europe; hundreds of thousands of Poles like the Żabińskis risked their lives and the lives of those they loved in order to help Poland’s Jews.

      Until Ackerman published The Zookeeper’s Wife, the Żabińskis’ compassionate wartime acts went nearly unnoted in the annals of history. Through extensive research, Ackerman recreates the little-known historical events of the Żabińskis’ unique, animal-filled household. The Zookeeper’s Wife became a bestseller upon its publication in 2008, over fifty years after Poland’s liberation. In March 2017, Focus Features released an eponymous film based on the book, starring Jessica Chastain in the title role.

      Overview

      In the mid-1930s, Jan and Antonina Żabiński enjoy a rich, rambunctious existence as the directors of Warsaw’s thriving zoo. The Żabińskis and their son, Ryś, live in a villa on the edge of the zoo grounds. There, they welcome a wild assortment of intellectuals, artists, and a revolving assortment of non-human friends, including a parakeet, a wolf cub, and lynx cubs.

      The brutal German invasion of Poland in 1939 destroys the zoo and upends the Żabińskis’ lives—as well as the lives of Warsaw’s 1.3 million inhabitants. As the occupational government enacts racist laws and brutalizes the Polish people, Lutz Heck, a fellow zoologist who became a powerful Nazi, steals the zoo’s valuable animals and, along with some SS officers, shoots the rest in a drunken spree. The Nazis aim to alter the natural world as much as they do the human world—Heck plans to breed modern animals to recreate extinct pureblooded species while exterminating others to create a perfect Aryan ecosystem.

      The Żabińskis scramble to keep the zoo going. Over the course of the war they host a pig farm, a community garden, and a fur farm on the zoo grounds. Jan and Antonina also forge ties to the Polish Underground and commit to resisting the Germans. They welcome Jews

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