Though The Enemy Above is fiction, it is based on real events. The Priest’s Grotto still exists, and while it no longer harbors Jewish refugees, it serves as a stark reminder of the horror that all Jews faced during World War II. Several Jewish families used it as a safe haven during the Nazi occupation of Western Ukraine. This area is filled with limestone and gypsum caves, and many refugees took advantage of the terrain to escape Adolf Hitler’s Judenfrei policy.

When I began working on this book, I quickly discovered the near impossibility of finding words to describe the enormity of the horror and death during the Holocaust. Millions of Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, and people from other ethnic groups were exterminated by a madman—one it took the combined might of the world’s greatest nations to defeat. The magnitude of the loss of so much human potential makes words seem empty and meaningless.

But as Bubbe says in The Enemy Above, Jews were persecuted for centuries before Hitler came to power. After the Russian Revolution, attacks on Jewish settlements, called pogroms, killed and destroyed the property of hundreds of thousands of Jews. And in this area of Western Ukraine, Jewish families were under constant assault for hundreds of years. In fact, many Jews throughout Europe were slow to believe that Hitler’s threat was out of the ordinary. Many saw it as just another in a long line of assaults against their very existence. By the time they discovered the magnitude of Hitler’s plans, it was already too late for millions of people.

Yet somehow in the midst of this suffering, the tenacity of the human spirit took root. When tyranny and oppression are opposed, they can ultimately be defeated. It may take years, decades, even centuries, but in the end the human desire for freedom and self-determination can win out. The fight for survival can be more powerful than any weapon or ideology.

In researching this novel, I found that the story of those who hid in the Priest’s Grotto was not unique. Many of the people whom Adolf Hitler considered inferior survived by their wits and ingenuity. They hid in caves, deep within forests, or high in mountain ranges. Some, like the Bielski brothers, took up arms and retreated deep into the forests of German-occupied Poland. Their guerilla warfare against the Nazis saved the lives of thousands of Jews. Men like Oskar Schindler risked their lives to smuggle hundreds of Jews to freedom. Undoubtedly, there are many more undiscovered stories of those who found the ability to survive amid a horrible tragedy.

I hope someday their stories are told.