The Forest of Vanishing Stars

A month after Yona finds Chana’s family shot dead by Nazis, she encounters a man named Aleksander in the forest. He is trying to catch fish but clearly doesn’t know how. She approaches and offers to help. Aleksander tells her that he is trying to feed a group of Jews who have fled the ghetto in the Polish town of Mir, but he has no experience surviving in the forest.

Yona catches enough fish for the group and then shows Aleksander how to do it too. Aleksander asks Yona several times who she is, but she realizes she does not know the answer herself. After Aleksander leaves with the fish, she realizes she will have to help his people, even if it means giving up her old life in the forest.

The next day, Yona meets Aleksander again and teaches him how to make a net to catch fish. He tells her the story of how he and a few others escaped mass execution in the ghetto, and that he has promised to protect the people who have followed him into