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Diane Ackerman: The Zookeeper's Wife

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Los Angeles Public Library

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Partner:: Los Angeles Public Library
Location:: Los Angeles Public Library
Los Angeles, CA
Event Date:: 10.20.08
Speakers:: Diane Ackerman,; Louise Steinman
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Summary: Author, poet, and naturalist Diane Ackerman discusses her latest book, The Zookeeper's Wife, about the eccentric family that owned the Warsaw Zoo during the 1930's, and who kept Jews hidden there throughout the Nazi occupation of Poland.

Bio

Diane Ackerman

Diane Ackerman was born in Waukegan, Illinois. She received an M.A., M.F.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell University. Her works of nonfiction include, most recently, The Zookeeper's Wife, narrative nonfiction about one of the most successful hideouts of World War II, a tale of people, animals, and subversive acts of compassion; An Alchemy of Mind, a poetics of the brain based on the latest neuroscience; Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden; Deep Play, which considers play, creativity, and our need for transcendence; A Slender Thread, about her work as a crisis line counselor; The Rarest of the Rare and The Moon by Whale Light, in which she explores the plight and fascination of endangered animals; A Natural History of Love; On Extended Wings, her memoir of flying; and the bestseller A Natural History of the Senses.

Her poetry has been published in leading literary journals, and in the books Origami Bridges: Poems of Psychoanalysis and Fire; I Praise My Destroyer; Jaguar of Sweet Laughter: New and Selected Poems; Lady Faustus; Reverse Thunder: A Dramatic Poem; Wife of Light; The Planets: A Cosmic Pastoral. She also writes nature books for children: Animal Sense; Monk Seal Hideaway; and Bats: Shadows in the Night.

Ms. Ackerman has received many prizes and awards, including a D. Litt. from Kenyon College, a Guggenheim Fellowship, Orion Book Award, John Burroughs Nature Award, and the Lavan Poetry Prize, as well as being honored as a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library. She also has the rare distinction of having a molecule named after her --dianeackerone. She has taught at a variety of universities, including Columbia, the University of Richmond, and Cornell. Her essays about nature and human nature have appeared in The New York Times, Smithsonian, Parade, The New Yorker, National Geographic, and many other journals, where they have been the subject of much praise. She hosted a five-hour PBS television series inspired by A Natural History of the Senses.

Louise Steinman

Louise Steinman is a writer and literary curator. Her work frequently deals with memory, history and reconciliation.

Her book, The Souvenir: A Daughter Discovers Her Father's War was cited as "A graceful, understated memoir that draws its strength from the complexities it explores." (New York Times Book Review).

The book won the 2002 Gold Medal in Autobiography/Memoir from ForeWord Magazine and has been the selection of several all-city and all-freshman reading programs. The book chronicles her quest to return a war souvenir to its owner and -- in the process -- illuminates how war changed one generation and shaped another.

Her first book, The Knowing Body: The Artist As Storyteller in Contemporary Performance was hailed by the L.A. Times as a "dazzling study of the performing arts." It is based on two decades of Steinman's experience as a performer/director with So&So&So&So interdisciplinary theater troupe, and as a dance/theater critic for publications ranging from Willamette Week to High Performance, Oakland Tribune and others.

She is currently completing a book titled Through the Crooked Mirror: My Conversation with Poland.

Her essays and feature articles have appeared in the Los Angeles Times Magazine, New York Times Syndicate, L.A. Weekly, Los Angeles Magazine, Salon.com, Washington Post and other publications. Her features include profiles of Zen rabbis, elevator operators, artists, memoirists, combat veterans, translators, filmmakers, and an innovator in deaf education.

She has curated the award-winning ALOUD at Central Library series for the Los Angeles Public Library for the past fifteen years and is also co-director of the Los Angeles Institute of the Humanities at USC. She was Senior Creative Advisor for the Sundance Institute Arts Writing Program and she is an active member of PEN Center USA West.

Chapters

: Watch Full Program

01 hr 05 min 58 sec

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01.: Introduction

02 min 16 sec

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02.: Unsung Rescue Efforts During the Holocaust

03 min 21 sec

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03.: Inspiration for Writing the Book

02 min 53 sec

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04.: Brutality and Heroism in Nazi-Occupied Poland

03 min 54 sec

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05.: Hiding Jews in the Warsaw Zoo

02 min 54 sec

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06.: The Intriguing Nature of Animals and Human-Animal Relationships

05 min 24 sec

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07.: Attacks Against the Zoo

04 min 13 sec

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08.: Maintaining Hope in Occupied Poland

04 min 41 sec

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09.: Wicek, the "Fat, Furry Thug"

04 min 48 sec

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10.: Using an Insect Collector to Smuggle People Out of the Ghetto

04 min 24 sec

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11.: Tracking Down Tenenbaum's Insect Collection

03 min 23 sec

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12.: Research and Investigation for the Book

04 min 09 sec

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13.: Q & A

00 min 15 sec

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14.: Q1: Maintaining the Zoo During the War

03 min 19 sec

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15.: Q2: Interviewing the Zabinskis' Son and Recognizing Holocaust Rescuers

03 min 24 sec

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16.: Q3: Unanswered Questions

01 min 08 sec

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17.: Q4: Interest in Warsaw's Bialowieza Primeval Forest

03 min 26 sec

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18.: Q5: Finding First-Hand Accounts of Life at the Warsaw Zoo

03 min 02 sec

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19.: Q6: Living Conditions at the Zoo

01 min 28 sec

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20.: Q7: Getting in Contact with Eyewitnesses

01 min 44 sec

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21.: Q8: Connecting with the Subject Matter

01 min 42 sec

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: Watch Full Program

01 hr 05 min 58 sec

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Diane Ackerman: The House Under a Crazy Star

03 min 37 sec

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Author, poet, and naturalist Diane Ackerman tells how a zookeeper and his family managed to keep hundreds of Jews hidden at their zoo during the Nazi occupation of Poland.
She explains how they managed to hide people in such a public place, and describes the chaos that resulted from caring for both refugees and zoo animals.
Diane Ackerman: Heroics During the Holocaust

02 min 43 sec

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Diane Ackerman explains how during the Holocaust some people (the zookeepers among them) would not only risk their lives by hiding people, but would go out of their way to keep their spirits up.
Diane Ackerman: Getting People Out of the Ghetto

03 min 13 sec

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Diane Ackerman describes how the zookeeper was able to get people from the ghetto and into the zoo, and explains how an insect collection left at the zoo turned out to be one of the key elements of the escape plan.
Watch Full Program

01 hr 05 min 58 sec

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