Search This Blog

Saturday, October 21, 2017

Zookeeper's Wife (2017)

Yes, this is another Holocaust movie.  So up front you know that it will be difficult.  The setting is occupied Poland, which is a different story than other parts of Europe for a couple of reasons.  The first is that they fought like crazy when the Germans invaded.  Warsaw was reduced to rubble.  They never stood a chance, but they fought bravely.  Poland at the time was 1/3 Jewish, and there were quite a few non-Jews who hid Jews throughout the long five-year war at great peril to themselves because they were saving neighbors and friends.  That is what this retelling of a true story is about.  A couple who had a zoo that was bombed in the early days of the war used their underground system of cages and pens to house Jews that they smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto before it was burned.  The logistics of successfully doing this involved not just the risk of hiding them, but having controlled interactions with the Nazis.  The thing that the movie does not demonstrate is how were they able to feed them all when food was increasingly scarce, but they did raise livestock for the German Army, so perhaps that was part of it.  In any case, this is emotionally intense, and at least in part, historically accurate. Well worth watching.

No comments:

Post a Comment