* * *
I’d love to give you a few notes on the real historical basis of The Forest of Vanishing Stars. I played around slightly with a few dates and minor geographical details to make the story work, but everything was based on the real history of the area.
Chana’s family, whom Yona meets toward the beginning of the novel, fled from the Volozhin ghetto, just north of the Nalibocka Forest. Just like the other ghettos mentioned in the book, the one in Volozhin was real. In August 1941, more than three thousand Jews from Volozhin and nearby villages were moved into a tiny ghetto. They were often shot at random, such as during an October 1941 Aktion, during which three hundred Jews were brought, ten at a time, to be killed in a field just outside the ghetto. In May 1942, the Germans oversaw a mass execution, carried out by local collaborators, in which more than fifteen hundred Jews were shot dead and then incinerated in a field. Another eight hundred were rounded up and machine-gunned down in a building. In August 1942, three hundred Jews were burned alive. The ghetto was finally “liquidated” in 1943.
Aleksander’s group comes from the Mir ghetto, about fifty-five miles south of Minsk. There, the killings began early. On July 20, 1941, the Germans rounded up nineteen Jewish and three non-Jewish intellectuals and murdered them in the forest. In October and November of that year, another two thousand Jews were killed, and the remainder of the Jews in the area were moved into a ghetto. Jews there received a ration of just 4.4 ounces of bread each day. In May 1942, the surviving Jews were moved into the large, run-down Mir Castle, to which there was only one entrance, making it harder to escape. But a Polish Jew named Oswald Rufeisen managed to infiltrate the local police station as a German translator. He tipped off ghetto prisoners that a liquidation was coming—and he helped distract police while an escape took place. More than two hundred escaped into the forest, as did Rufeisen himself, who later converted to Catholicism, became a friar, and moved to Israel. The remaining 560 Jews in the ghetto were murdered in August 1942.
Zus’s group comes from the Lida ghetto, which was established in September 1941. In May 1942, around a thousand workers and their families were pulled aside, and the remaining Jews—5,670 of them—were murdered. Soon, Jews from other settlements were moved into the Lida ghetto, and in March 1943, there was another round of killings; some two thousand Jews were shot just outside town. The ghetto refilled with Jews from elsewhere once again, eventually numbering four thousand, and the ghetto was liquidated in July 1943, with the remaining prisoners sent to the Majdanek death camp.
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.