"Suddenly two pairs of black boots appeared in the shrubbery near us... I looked up very, very slowly, from the boots to the uniforms and all the way up to the caps against the blue sky, and then quickly looked down... Two German officers... Finally, one of them addressed us in German, his attitude business-like, but with a touch of compassion, 'Mensch, du hast keine Zukunft (Man, you have no future).'"
In a Land of Forest and Darkness is a story of coming of age in the shadow of the Holocaust. Sara Lustigman was fifteen years old when the Nazis occupied her small town in eastern Poland, and her whole world shattered.
Sara's personal story provides a glimpse into the lives of her family, friends and townspeople, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, from immediately before WWII and during the years of the Nazi occupation: persecution, roundups, ghetto, slave labor, the "Final Solution", escape to the forest, resistance groups and Soviet partisan units. Major events are portrayed alongside personal experiences - support in times of need, acts of betrayal, loves and disappointments, and often impossible dilemmas. All are described from a personal point of view, with frankness and sensitivity.
The book also recounts the tale of Sara's future husband, Michael (Misha) Omelinski from Brest Litovsk. Misha too miraculously survived, and after hair-raising adventures joined a Soviet partisan group in the Polesia woods (in Belarus of today) and became a fierce partisan and fighter. It was in those woods that the two youngsters met and tied their fates until the end of the war and beyond.