The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story

By Diane Ackerman

Diane Ackerman has skillfully woven Antonina Zabinska’s writings about her time at the Warsaw Zoo before and during World War II into a book that both terrifies and delights.

Antonina, her zookeeper husband Jan, and their son Ryszard lived in a villa on the zoo grounds.

“Each morning, when zoo dawn arrived, a starling gushed a medley of stolen songs, distant wrens cranked up a few arpeggios, and the cuckoos called monotonously like clocks stuck on the hour.

Winter Journey

by Diane Armstrong

In 1941, on a sunny July morning, 1,500 Jews living in and around Nowa Kalwaria, Poland, were rounded up, forced into a wooden barn and set on fire. In the town itself, blood puddled in the streets as Jews were pulled out of shops and homes and murdered.

At the opening of this book, the main character, Halina Shore, a forensic dentist affiliated with coroner’s office in Sydney, Australia, knows nothing of Nowa Kalwaria. Although she was born in Poland, she and her mother, Zosia Szczencinska, immigrated to Australia in 1947 when she was nine.

Halina’s seemingly perfect life is falling apart. She ended an eight-year-old relationship with a married lover, Rhys Evans, editor of an influential tabloid, when he published a damaging article about the coroner’s office. Halina, misled about the subject of the article, was quoted. Her boss reprimanded her. Then, testifying in a court case against a man Halina believes to be guilty of torturing and murdering a child, the jury was unconvinced and let him go.

Seeking a break, she decides to accept an invitation from the Institute of National Remembrance in Poland to join a team investigating a mass grave at Nowa Kalwaria. Their objective is to determine if the victims were killed by the Nazis – or by local Poles. As the Polish-born president of the International Association of Odontologists, Halina is the perfect candidate for this team and has experience with similar teams in other areas.

Anna and the Swallow Man

by Gavriel Savit

How do you explain to a seven-year-old why her father is never coming back? Why she should never use her real name? Why deceiving people sometimes isn't as wrong as her parents told her?

More importantly: how do you keep this Jewish child safe during the Holocaust without leaving her fearful, suspicious and unable to connect with others when it's over.

This is the story of Anna Lania, 7, who is living in Krakow in 1939.  Her father is a linguistics professor and her mother is dead. Every day of the week, Anna and her father speak a different language, and they visit friends who speak those languages on the appointed day.  They speak French with Monsieur Bouchard, Yiddish with Reb Shmulik and German with the pharmacist.