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.
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.