"The people who said it was destroyed lied to us! It's damaged, there are no doors or floors and all our belongings were stolen, but there's a roof and walls! Mom! And stairs!"Ī layer of snow masked the ground, and most of the trees had been sheared off by shells, but some delicate black branches still loomed against the blue sky, as did the Monkey House, the villa, and the ruins of several other buildings. "Mom, our house survived!" he said excitedly. Captions read: "dead city," "a wilderness of ruins," "mountains of rubble." Cold as the day was, Antonina wrote that she began sweating, and that night, mired in shock and exhaustion, they stayed with Nunia's friends.Īfter breakfast the next morning, Antonina and Ryś hurried to the zoo, where Ryś rushed ahead, then circled back, pink-cheeked from the cold. With 85 percent of the buildings destroyed, the once-ornate city looked like a colossal refuse heap and cemetery, everything rendered down to its constituent molecules, all the palaces, squares, museums, neighborhoods, and landmarks reduced to classless chunks of debris. In some shots, a sickly pale winter sun oozes into the crevices of pockmarked buildings, over raw metal cables, weirdly twisted pipes and iron. Archival photographs and films show charred window and door frames standing like sky portals, tall office buildings reduced to a hive of open cells, apartment houses and churches calving like glaciers, all the trees felled, the parks heaped with rubble, and surreal streets lined with facades thin as tombstones. What she saw "dazed and sickened" her, she wrote, because, despite rumors, warnings, and eyewitness reports, she still wasn't prepared for a city in tatters. Dropped off in Włochy, they secured a ride with a Russian pilot, who agreed to share his open truck, into which they piled.Īs they finally entered Warsaw's city limits, a wave of filthy snow and sand splashed the sides of the truck, the snow stank, the sand irritated their eyes, and they huddled to keep warm. On travel day it was zero degrees, and only the baby, swaddled in a small down blanket, didn't shiver as the truck shambled along, pausing frequently to be searched by soldiers on patrol.
Needing a large truck, a scarce commodity, Antonina prevailed upon soldiers traveling east with a load of potatoes, who agreed to carry her group part of the way. Nunia hurried on ahead to scout, and brought back news that she'd found friends still living in the zoo district, with whom they could stay, and she reported that the villa, though blasted and looted, still stood. Once again, refugees clogged the roads, this time desperate for home, even though they'd heard their apartments lay in ruins. Fortunately, she had saved a few gold "piglets" (rubles) for buying their passage back to Warsaw, a trip she knew might be costly. When her food money ran out and she needed to buy milk for the baby, the manor house took pity on her and sent provisions. However, local children itched to return to school, their own private timekeeping, which meant Antonina's group had to leave the schoolhouse for another temporary shelter.
What kind of "pick" this was I cannot say.but I can say, sadly, is do not Pick.Although she nourished hope of Jan's release, she decided to pass the rest of the winter in Marywil, because traveling to Warsaw with small children seemed risky. The killing of an elephant was for me very disturbing. Oh, do not expect lots of adorable animal stories either, as they are all either confiscated or killed before you get 10 minutes into the book. I stuck through this, but only because I kept waiting for action. Yes, we are privy to all of her feelings, but she is of course deeply depressed. She mostly is the "heart of the home", which in Poland apparently means she irons, cooks and cleans.
The revolutionary actions of her husband are hardly discussed at all. It read more like a Ph.d thesis on the stresses of war-time than a novel.
The story wasn't all that interesting either. When she would switch back to her natural voice, the "Euopean" would drag for a few syllables, very distracting. She'd perhaps been watching too many B vampire movies, trying to form her Polish accent. Each time there was a quotation from the Zookeeper's Wife (this is a factual account drawn from diaries, it seems, possibly interviews with family), the narrator switched to the worst Eastern European accent I have ever heard. When I read the discription for the book, I was intrigued.animals, WWII, Hiding Jews from the Nazi's in the Zoo, well it sounded both fascinating and moving.