The Zoo Keepers Wife by Diane Ackerman

I love how this book wove history and the life sciences into the "memoir" of Antonina Zabinski". She based it on Antonina's and Jan's (her husband) diaries, and used several accounts of others who survived the war in Warsaw, Poland. The Nazi's fascination with blood lines and, seemingly contradictory, ecology, make this even more intriguing. We observe animal nature in this story, not just of the animals they cared for and observed in the zoo (and in their home), but of people. The brutality and zeal of the Nazi's, and the Jewish ghetto where people were reduced to simple animal survival, make the risks that people like Jan & Antonina seem so incredible. They risked their lives - their family - to do what was right. Before the war, there was a sense of order and rhythm to life that was magnified by the creatures around her. Antonina writes in her journal of the morning ritual of the various animals waking, starting their day with screeches, growls and roars; of the caretakers feeding the animals, gardeners tending to the grounds, and the people visiting. When the Germans began the bombing of Warsaw, all order was lost.

The Zoo kept the only breeding record for the forest bison, a buffalo native to Poland's Bialoweski Forest, a sort of temperate wilderness. Lutz Heck, zoo keeper for the Berlin Zoo, came and took all of the bison and any other animal of significance. Many of the animals died in the bombing, and others escaped. The only way they were able to hang on to the zoo at all, was by raising pork for the Germans (which Jan often poisoned), and then later a fur farm. The zoo, with it's many comings & goings, and right next to a German arms depot, became a safe house to hide Jews until they could find a more permanent place to go to.

I guess I find that this story touches my heart all the more, because it's written with such respect of life. The book ends in an epilogue, with the forest bison, eventually returned, snorting in the Bialoweski, along with the little wild horses, which were the closest ancient relative to those that cavemen painted on walls. The genes that those animals carry continue on today. Just like those of the millions of Jews and poles that were killed during the war, carry on in the descendants of those that survived, some even from the help of Jan & Antonina.