The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story

The Warsaw Zoo, a fairly new institution, was comprised of a large campus with various installations built to house different kinds of animals. The main house, where the director and his family lived, was called the villa. This large, rambling home had many levels, concealed passageways to other parts of the zoo, and hiding places. Guests staying in the villa knew to remain out of sight during the day, though they had the freedom to roam the house at night. When strangers or soldiers approached the villa, Antonina played “Go, Go, Go to Crete,” an opera song by the Jewish composer Offenbach, and the Guests hid in silence.

There are several terms that relate to the efforts of Jews to evade discovery by the Nazis. Melina is the Polish term for hiding place. The villa was one of the most used—and highest regarded—melinas in Warsaw. Jews who escaped the Ghetto and moved from one melina to another were called “cats.” The Nazis constantly searched for the melinas. When Nazis discovered a safe house or they arrested a Jewish fugitive, the house or the individual was said to be “burnt.”

Historians and commentators have often praised those in occupied nations who rose up secretly to conduct military operations against the Nazis, for instance the Dutch and the French resistance movements. Ackerman reveals that the Polish Underground was actually the most effective of these organizations. Called the Home Army, the Polish Resistance rose up without the assistance of the Allied nations while still occupied by the Nazis. The Germans only quelled the famous Warsaw Uprising by bringing in SS troops and fighting a pitched battle for 63 days.