Book Review: Survival at the Zoo by Maarten Frankenhuis

 

Note: The title of this book has been translated into English by me for the reading comprehension of this blog's viewers as the book itself isn't available in English (yet). The original title reads Overleven in de dierentuin.

A non-fiction about Artis (Amsterdam Zoo) during the World War II. This one seemed interesting to me, so I picked it up. 

This book gives us a thorough breakdown of Artis during the WWII years, particularly how its inhabitants and the people looking after them were doing.

This is a solid book. It's thorough and goes through the events in a chronological way. I honestly had no idea how bad Artis had it sometimes. Out of the Dutch zoos I've been to I've probably had visited this zoo the least, but it's still very interesting to see the history of the zoo, both before and during the war. 

This book can be quite painful to read, from the obvious antisemitism and people forced into hiding in the zoo itself to of course the animals and zookeepers also suffering because of food shortages (or rather, shortages of the correct food for the animals). 

Overall I think this is a neat educational book on the topic. It takes its time (while also not being too long) and does the topic the justice it deserves. It's thorough enough, but also doesn't drag or anything, and there's also a few smaller sections interspersed to give more attention to a certain sub-topic (such as a pig which had been slaughtered from the petting zoo during the Hunger Winter, or an interview with someone who used to hide in the zoo), which was interesting. 

The final chapter also briefly delves into other Dutch zoos during wartime, some having had it worse than Artis, some better. Rotterdam Zoo was partially destroyed and was re-opened at a different location (Blijdorp), and Den Haag Zoo was just closed down due to the damage and never re-opened at all. So it's neat that other zoos get a brief dedication to them as well, but do note that (despite the subtitle of the book) the main focus truly is on Artis. If one wants to know more about other Dutch zoos around this time they'd have to look further, because this book only gives a very short summary of it. A book I can recommend about Blijdorp Zoo's history before, during and after this time is The House with the Lions (Het huis met de leeuwen) by Tania Heimans. 

For what it is, this is a good book on the subject and I do recommend it. I also want to learn more about Artis' history outside of World War II (which this book covers very briefly), so I'll have to look into that sometime.

Rating: 3.5/5