Chapter 1
"It's not enough to do research from a distance. It's by living beside animals that you learn their behavior and psychology." (1.18)
Chapter 2
"Adolf has to be stopped," one of the keeps insisted. Jan knew he didn't mean Hitler, but "Adolf the Kidnapped," a nickname given to the ringleader of the rhesus monkeys, who had been waging war wi...
Chapter 3
War wasn't something Antonina wanted to think about, especially since her last experience of war stole both her parents, so she assured herself, as most Poles did, of their solid alliance with Fran...
Chapter 4
Ever bomb creates a different scent, depending on where it hits, what it boils into aerosol and the nose detects slipping apart, as molecules mix with air and float free. (4.8)
Chapter 5
When Britain and France declared war on Germany, Poles rejoiced and radio stations played the French and British national anthems endlessly for days, but mid-September brought no relief from the re...
Chapter 6
The best plan, he suggested, was to arrest Jan and drive to Warsaw with him as a prisoner; and despite their past cordiality, Jan worried if Müller could be trusted. (6.17)
Chapter 7
They didn't trust Heck, but on the other hand, he was sweet on Antonina, and in theory, as a fellow zookeeper, he should be sympathetic to their situation. (7.15)
Chapter 9
One awoke in darkness and silence, the bedroom windows sealed with plywood and most of the animal calls either missing or muffled. (9.1)
Chapter 10
If she couldn't protect the animals in her keeping, how could she protect her own son? (10.14)
Chapter 11
The idea of safety had shrunk to particles—one snug moment, then the next. (11.12)
Chapter 12
At first, while the Ghetto remained porous, the Żabińskis' Jewish friends believed it a temporary lepers' colony, or that Hitler's regime would quickly collapse and justice prevail, or that they...
Chapter 13
"I had a moral indebtedness to the Jews," Jan once told a reporter. (13.2)
Chapter 14
Hiding them posed problems, but who better than zookeepers to devise fitting camouflage? (14.1)
Chapter 15
Antonina knew Jan wanted to ride with Ziegler because most Ghetto gates were heavily guarded by German sentry on the outside and Jewish police on the inside. (15.45)
Chapter 16
Lonia had watched Szymon die; her daughter had been discovered by the Gestapo in Krakòw and shot; only the dachshund survived as a family. (16.13)
Chapter 17
Aided by friends on the Aryan side, tens of thousands of Jews managed to escape from the Ghetto before the war ended, but some famously stayed. (17.9)
Chapter 18
Whenever Gross left home, there was always the chance of being recognized and denounced, but in an atmosphere of daily street executions and house searches, Antonina worried when she heard a rumor...
Chapter 19
All the Guests and friends in hiding had secret animal names, and Magdalena's was "Starling," in part because of Antonina's fondness for the bird, but also because she pictured her "flying from nes...
Chapter 21
Autumn of 1942 also heralded a new Underground group the Żabińskis found immensely helpful: Żegota, cryptonym for the Council to Aid the Jews, a cell […] with the mission of helping Jews hidde...
Chapter 22
"Animals behave differently in the wild. We make captive ones lives on a schedule that's unnatural to them because it's easier for us to take care of them, and that disturbs their normal sleep rhyt...
Chapter 23
Sharing a room, the hamster and Maurycy seemed to find amusement in each other, and Antonina noted how quickly the two became companions. (23.29)
Chapter 26
Confined to her bed's well-padded prison, Antonina rose occasionally to hobble the few painful steps onto her balcony. […] Being bedridden had slowed the world down, given her time to page throug...
Chapter 27
In time, her loyal, angry Guests stopped talking to Jan entirely or even making eye contact with him—hating how he treated her but unwilling to confront him, they blotted him out. (27.7)
Chapter 28
As safety ebbed and flowed during the war, even a quiet offhand remark could trigger a landslide of trouble. Word filtered back to Antonina and Jan that one of their Polish zoo guards had caught si...
Chapter 29
Jan whispered that these members of the Underground's sabotage wing had set fire to German gas tanks and urgently needed to lie low. They'd been told to run for the zoo, and, unbeknownst to Antonin...
Chapter 31
Later, when she calmed down, she tried to diagnose the behavior of the SS soldiers—did they ever consider shooting them, or was it always a sick game of power and fear? […] "If so," she thought...
Chapter 32
Over the next few days, Mrs. Kokot provided bread and butter, and brought a small wooden bathtub for Teresa and hot water. (32.17)
Chapter 36
It's a chimera I think Antonina would have identified with: a defender half woman, half animal. On both sides of the pillar, a bearded god spills water from his mouth, and it's easy to picture Anto...