The Forest of Vanishing Stars(103)

Escapes took place from all three ghettos—and from others nearby, too. Many of the Jews who found their way to the Bielski encampment had escaped from ghettos. In fact, members of the Bielski group—including Aron—ran rescue missions into the ghettos to persuade people to leave, and to show them how. “Aron was a tiny boy,” Henryka recalled during our conversation. “He was going into a hole under the gate into the ghetto to get people out. One day, they made a huge mission. One hundred fifty people escaped through a tunnel they had dug by spoon. It led one hundred fifty meters, maybe two hundred, under the fence, until they finally escaped out of the ghetto.”

Those escapes were miraculous, seemingly impossible. The vast majority of Jews did not make it out—and those who did faced nearly insurmountable odds on the outside, too. Finding their way to larger groups, where refugees could pool their knowledge and resources, was key.

I’d like to touch on a few other historical elements of The Forest of Vanishing Stars.

The nuns Yona encounters in the middle of the book were loosely inspired by a real-life group of eleven nuns known today as the Blessed Martyrs of Nowogródek. In the summer of 1943, life had become very difficult in the town of Nowogródek, near the Nalibocka Forest. The Jews of the town had been executed or deported, and sixty townspeople, including two priests, had recently been murdered. In the middle of July, 120 townspeople were arrested by the Germans and slated for execution, and the nuns, led by a woman named Sister Maria Stella, decided to offer themselves in exchange for those prisoners. The Germans accepted the nuns’ offer, and on the morning of Sunday, August 1, the eleven sisters, ranging from age twenty-six to fifty-four, were driven into the woods, shot, and buried in a mass grave.

Fifty-six years later, the nuns were confirmed as martyrs by Pope John Paul II, and they were beatified on March 5, 2000, which means that they are recognized by the Catholic Church as “blessed” and thus have the ability to intercede on behalf of individuals who pray in their name. “Before the war and during the occupation, they zealously served the inhabitants of Nowogródek, participating actively in pastoral care and education and engaging in various works of charity,” Pope John Paul said at the time of their beatification. “Their love for those among whom they fulfilled their mission took on special significance during the horror of the Nazi invasion. Together and unanimously, they offered their lives to God, asking in exchange that the lives of the mothers and fathers of families and that of the local pastor be spared. The Lord graciously accepted their sacrifice and, we believe, abundantly rewarded them in his glory.” Their feast day in the Catholic Church is celebrated each year on August 1—the anniversary of their death.

The nuns in The Forest of Vanishing Stars are not meant to represent the Martyrs of Nowogródek, whose story and deaths unfolded differently, but I hope their story serves as a reminder that even in moments of death and despair during the war, God was there—and that there were people from all walks of life standing up to injustice in the face of evil.

Another historical element I want to mention is the swamp where half of Yona’s group flees during Operation Hermann (the German incursion into the forest in the summer of 1943). In real life, the Bielski group escaped the German forces during the summer of 1943 in a similar way. They abandoned their camp and fled to a large swamp in the middle of the forest called Krasnaya Gorka, where they knew the Germans were unlikely to follow. As they trudged through the mud, they tied themselves together so they wouldn’t sink, and at night, they tethered themselves to trees so they wouldn’t drown. They ate mushrooms and berries, and flour made from tree bark, and they were near starvation when the Germans finally retreated, torching many villages behind them.

I tried to stay as accurate as possible in terms of the things the forest refugees would have eaten, the way they sheltered, the way they fought back. Any errors or omissions are my own.



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I used what felt like a million nonfiction books in the research of this novel, including: Defiance (Nechama Tec), Fugitives of the Forest (Allan Levine), Polish Customs, Traditions & Folklore (Sophie Hodorowicz Knab), How to Eat in the Woods (Bradford Angier), Masters of Death (Richard Rhodes), Fighting Back (Harold Werner), Kabbalah: The Mystic Quest in Judaism (David Ariel), Do Not Go Gentle (Charles Gelman), Jack & Rochelle (Jack and Rochelle Sutin, with Lawrence Sutin), When Bad Things Happen to Good People (Harold Kushner), They Fought Back (Yuri Suhl), The Cruel Hunters (French L. MacLean), Kill or Get Killed (Col. Rex Applegate), Slavic Witchcraft (Natasha Helvin), Fairy Tales of the Russians and Other Slavs (Ace and Olga Pilkington), Survival Wisdom & Know-How (from the editors of Stackpole Books), Smithsonian WWII Map by Map, and Historical Atlas of the Holocaust (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).

Perhaps one of the most helpful books I used was Naliboki Forest: Land, Wildlife and Human by Professor Vadim Sidorich, a zoologist and doctor of biology. But Vadim’s assistance went far beyond the sweeping book he authored; he also works as a Naliboki Forest ecotourism guide, and I reached out to him for help. He gave me detailed notes on many of the scenes in this book, and he answered every question I asked, bringing to life the flora and fauna of the Naliboki Forest the same way Aron Bielski brought to life for me the plight of Jewish refugees during the war. His help—and his willingness to answer even the most minutely detailed questions—was absolutely invaluable, and I could not have written this book without him, nor could I have written as accurately about the deep forest that held so many lives in its lush heart.