RaveOrion MagazineIt would have been tempting in a tale like this to reach for the obvious metaphor of Jews animalized, hiding in cages from Nazi persecutors. The truth is far more complex than that: Antonina, who eyed two terrified lynx kits and understood how to coax them into security, emerges as the opposite of all the Nazis bring with them to Warsaw. Throughout the war she remains empathic, intuitive, able to allow the natural and human world to proceed as it will — able to give, apparently with little discussion, her own lebensraum to allow others to survive. Ackerman, with her profound understanding of nature, tells Antonina’s story in a way that makes it clear her roles as the zookeeper’s wife and heroine of the Resistance are inextricably connected, both in what the natural world has taught her, and taught her to accept.
