Diane Ackerman wants those around her to “listen for the heartbeat beneath the words” they hear.

“Listening in this way is the soul of empathy, and is one of the most powerful gifts that humans can give each other,” said Ackerman, a New York Times best-selling author.

Also an essayist and poet, Ackerman spoke at the Syracuse Symposium series Tuesday. She discussed her nonfiction book “The Zookeeper’s Wife. The book followed Antonina and Jan Zabinski in Warsaw, Poland, during the fall of 1939, when a Nazi bomb decimated the city zoo. In the book, the zookeepers begin smuggling Jews out of the Warsaw ghetto and hiding them inside the zoo.

In the lecture’s opening remarks, George Langford, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, said Ackerman’s writing style “focuses on the complexities of human interactions and our miraculous connections to the natural world.”

For inspiration, Ackerman said she read Antonina Zabinski’s unpublished diaries.

After the bombings, the Zabinskis rebuilt and refortified their zoo, resolving to stand against the Nazi regime, Ackerman said. They hid Jews in the back rooms and enclosures of the zoo’s empty cages.

For secrecy, the Zabinskis used zoo exhibits as code words.

For her novel, Ackerman said she focused on the emotional angle of Antonina Zabinski’s actions, instead of the “Rambo-esque” heroism typical of wartime stories.

“I feel that, as a writer, my job is to celebrate her great generosity of spirit, her character,” Ackerman said.

Ackerman said that despite having written the book more than seven years ago, she still feels its influence in her life. She continues to research many aspects of Nazi dogma and its extent.

She said she often “falls in love” with the subjects she writes about, usually immersing herself in her research. The process, she said, is “atmospheric.”

“It’s a sort of romance, and it has my full attention when I’m thinking about it,” Ackerman said. “This is a story that stays with me. It still gives me chills. I don’t think it will ever stop moving me.”

The lecture drew an older crowd, many of whom were current and retired college professors and Syracuse residents.

William Stewart, an 80-year-old retired resident of Syracuse who lived through World War II, commended Ackerman on her knowledge in the book.

“She knew her subject extraordinarily well. She was more engrossed and more emotionally involved than the run-of-the-mill author,” he said.

Tadeusz Iwaniec, a mathematics professor in Arts and Sciences, said the lecture made him “incredibly emotional.” As a native of Poland, Iwaniec said he has a strong connection to the story through his parents, who experienced the war firsthand.

“These days, young people don’t listen. In Poland, for example, many young people have no clue what has happened,” Iwaniec said. “History is a lesson that we have to learn, for it is a lesson that will help us learn for the future.”

Published on September 25, 2013 at 12:44 am