Max wrote in The New York Times, "This is an absorbing book, diminished sometimes by the choppy way Ackerman balances Antonina's account with the larger story of the Warsaw Holocaust. The result of her tenacious research, keen interpretation and her own "transmigration of sensibility" is a shining book beyond category." D. But every rapturous hour she has spent communing with plants and animals, every insight gleaned into human nature, every moment under the spell of language is a steppingstone that led her to Poland, the home of her maternal grandparents, and to the incomparable heroes Jan and Antonina Zabinski. Ever since A Natural History of the Senses, she has been building a galaxy of incandescent works that celebrate the unity and wonder of the living world. Reception Critical reception ĭonna Seaman wrote enthusiastically in her Los Angeles Times review, "It is no stretch to say that this is the book Ackerman was meant to write. On September 21, 1965, Yad Vashem (Israel's official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust) recognized Jan and Antonina Żabiński as Righteous Among the Nations.
The Żabińskis survive the war and the zoo reopens in 1949, with Jan as its new director. Jan Żabiński is wounded in the armed August 1944 Warsaw uprising against the German occupiers and, for a time, is interned in a POW camp. Although the German occupiers execute those aiding Jews, Antonina Żabińska maintains a semblance of prewar life at the villa, harboring a menagerie of animals – such as otters, a badger, hyena pups, lynxes, and a rabbit – as well as the secret guests. As many as 300 such "guests" pass through the zoo, and many survive the war with the Żabińskis' and the underground's assistance. At the villa and in the zoo's structures, they secretly shelter Jews, most escaping from the doomed Warsaw ghetto.
Jan and Antonina Żabiński become active with the Polish underground resistance. The zoo is closed under German occupation, but the Żabińskis continue to occupy the villa, and the zoo itself is converted first as a pig farm and subsequently as a fur farm. Most of the zoo's animals and structures are destroyed in the bombings and siege of the city. This part of their life abruptly ends with the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, subsequently starting World War II (1939–1945). His wife, Antonina, has a remarkable empathy with animals, and their villa in the zoo acts as a nursery and residence for numerous animals, as well as for their son. In the 1930s, Jan Żabiński is the director of a thriving zoo in Warsaw, Poland.