Hiding in the House Under a Crazy Star - Review of "The Zookeeper's Wife"

Would you take someone into your home to save their life? What if getting caught meant you'd be killed, and so would your whole family?

Anyone who answeres with a quick 'Yes' to this question is a fool.

OK, there are two kinds of fools here. There are those who will would get everyone killed by their quick decsion. Then there are those fools who will do the right thing becasue it is the right thing, and then rearrange their lives to fit that decision.

The Zookeeper's Wife is a harrowing (non-fiction) tale of the an intellectual Polish family who risk everything to hide enemies of Nazi Germany (mostly Jews, but others as well) in Warsaw under occupation. The amazing thing about the book is how light-hearted it comes across. Ackerman has a real skill for conjuring the presence of her title character, Antonina. Even with all the stresses of daily Polish life under German rule, we can feel Antonina's effusive personality flowing through her crazy household.

I think that this story would make a particularly good match to more scholarly histories of the occupation of Warsaw, such as Norman Davies' Rising '44. Neither one is going to make you feel good about humanity (or maybe it will if you see defiance and perseverence as outweighing atrocity), but together they paint a deep picture of the Polish capital under seige, both physical and personal.