The story in this book takes place across a period of time in which boundaries, the exercise of power and names of places often changed. For example, through the nineteenth century, the city today known as Lviv was generally known as Lemberg, located on the eastern outskirts of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Soon after the First World War, it became part of newly independent Poland and was called Lwów until the outbreak of the Second World War, when it was occupied by the Soviets, who knew it as Lvov. In July 1941, the Germans unexpectedly conquered the city and made it the capital of Distrikt Galizien in the General Government, when it was known once more as Lemberg. After the Red Army vanquished the Nazis in the summer of 1944, it became part of Ukraine and was called Lviv, the name that is generally used today. Lemberg, Lviv, Lvov and Lwów are the same place.
What to call the city, and other places the names of which changed across the years, in the pages of this book posed a number of difficulties. I have generally sought to use the name by which the place was referred to by those who controlled it at the time of which I am writing.