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 zoo animals and their Guests-Resistance activists and refugee Jews many of
whom Jan had smuggled from the Warsaw Ghetto. Ironically the empty zoo cages helped to hide
scores of doomed people who were code-named after the animals whose names they occupied.
Others hid in the nooks and crannies of the house itself. Jan led a cell of saboteurs and the
Zabinskis' young son risked his life carrying food to the Guests while also tending an
eccentric array of creatures in the house. With hidden people having animal names and pet
animals having human names it's small wonder the zoo's codename became The House Under a Crazy
Star. Yet there is more to this story than a colorful cast. With her exquisite sensitivity to
the natural world Diane Ackerman explores the role of nature in both kindness and savagery
and she unravels the fascinating and disturbing obsession at the core of Nazism: both a worship
of nature and its violation as humans sought to control the genome of the entire planet.
