There has been so much written about the Nazis, but for me, looking at them from a natural history perspective goes to the heart of what the Nazi lunacy was really all about.
Click play to listen. Recorded on November 3, 2007.
Diane Ackerman reads from her poems “School Prayer,” “Climate Change,” “We Die,” “Beija-flor,” and “Ode to the Alien,” followed by an excerpt from her narrative The Zookeeper’s Wife: A War Story (2007). The book chronicles the true story of Christian zookeepers at the Warsaw Zoo who saved three hundred Jews during World War II by capitalizing on the Nazi obsession with the environment, eugenics, and pureblood animals.
Generously sponsored by the Poetry Foundation.
Tags
Nazis,
Poland,
Christians,
Jews,
poetry,
nonfiction,
World War II,
eugenics,
nature,
Carl Sagan,
zoo,
aliens,
science
