The Forest of Vanishing Stars(104)
Vadim went so far as to trek into the depths of the forest to send me photos of abandoned World War I bunkers where my characters might have sheltered, hollowed-out oak trees large enough to hide multiple people, and molds my characters might have used to form mud bricks. Because of Vadim, I know things I would never have otherwise learned, such as the fact that during the war, the main varieties of mushrooms eaten by refugees included boletus, Russula, chanterelle, and honey fungus, and that half also ate sulphur shelf mushrooms. I know that if you’re building a roof for your dugout, you should either use oak bark from a dead tree or spruce bark from an old live tree, and that hedgehogs—a great source of food—are easiest to catch at twilight in the warm season and under big spruce trunk bases in the cold season. I know that the larvae of the May beetle were easy to find during the war and could be used for making fatty breads, and that refugees often collected and fried their larvae, too. Vadim was incredibly generous with his vast knowledge, and I will be forever grateful. If you are ever in Belarus and would like to see the forest for yourself, look no further than the Naust Eco Station, run by Vadim and his wife, Irina. You can find them online at www.wolfing.info, a site that also contains many photographs and articles. It’s a great resource if you’re interested in learning more about the terrain after reading this book.
If you’re wondering why the forest is referred to in the book as the Nalibocka, and in Vadim’s book (and in some of my notes here) as the Naliboki, it’s because the former is the Polish spelling, while the latter is the Belarusian (formerly “Belorussian”) spelling. When the events of the book took place, the forest was within Polish borders, and the forest was known by the Polish name; now, it lies within Belarus because of the shifting of national borders that took place during the twentieth century. Similarly, the city called Nowogródek (the Polish name) in the book is now called Navahrudak or Novogrudok. There are many other such instances, but in the book, I’ve tried to retain the Polish spellings wherever possible, since those would have been accurate in the 1940s.
For translation help, I’d like to thank German translator Jens, Russian/Belarusian translator Anna, and Yiddish translator Arik. I struggled the most with the Yiddish translations, because they involve transliteration (in this case from Hebrew letters to Roman letters), which is never a perfect art, but which was further complicated by regional dialects and the fact that Yiddish is largely a slang language. To that end, I also consulted Rebbetzin Hindel Levitin of the Chabad House Palm Beach, and my friend (and foreign rights agent) Heather Baror-Shapiro, as well as Shiri Shapira, who works as a Yiddish translator for Armchair Publishing, my beloved Israeli publishing house, and Shiri’s colleague Arun Schaechter Viswanath. In the end, the translations I used came mostly from Shiri and Arun, because they took into account the regional dialect and accent that best fit the story. All the aforementioned Yiddish speakers gave me invaluable input, and if I’ve slightly missed the mark, the error is mine—though I promise, it’s not for lack of trying. I had several sleepless nights, and one nightmare, worrying about just the three short Yiddish sentences in chapter 1! Rebbetzin Levitin also went out of her way to help with the accuracy of a few other passages, for which I am deeply grateful.
I also need to thank Tamara Vershitskaya, the researcher and curator of the Museum of Jewish Resistance in Novogrudok, who answered several questions for me, as well as my friend Pam Kancher, the executive director of the Holocaust Memorial Resource & Education Center in Maitland, Florida, who is always willing to provide help and answers when I need them. It means so much when people are willing to spend their time, energy, and resources lending a hand, and I appreciate it deeply.
* * *
When I talked to Aron Bielski, I asked him what he thought made ordinary men like him and his brothers rise up and do something so extraordinary. He was silent for a long time and then said softly, simply, “God.”
I was especially struck by that, because to hear Henryka and Aron tell it, there wasn’t much time for religious observance during those years in the forest; their focus had to be on survival. “You cannot do it; you have to go fight, you have to go for a food mission,” Henryka explained. “But there was a rabbi who taught religion, and they celebrated high holidays, too. They celebrated the best they could.” Aron said he couldn’t recall if they even lit candles for Shabbat. “I don’t remember that,” he said. “But if you didn’t have a candle, you took a piece of wood.”
Even in the darkness, that light burned. God was with them all along, in the big moments and the small. I think they felt it then, and Aron still feels it now.
Today, eight decades after the Germans swept through Poland and took so many lives, Aron and Henryka are concerned about the way the world sometimes seems to be splintering once again. “We worry because of what’s going on in the world now with the hate between nations, between religions, between races,” Henryka said. Added Aron, “It was, it is, and it always will be.”
As for the message Aron would like to share with the world today? “Be nice if at all possible, and help always poorer and weaker individuals. Hopefully there will not be such a war again, although there is still too much hate, and you never know what the world will get.… We hope it will never happen again, but there is no guarantee.”
Let’s not forget the past. Let’s not forget the heroes who fought so that others could survive. Let’s not forget to be kind to our fellow man.