The Real-Life Katniss: The Sparrow of Lublin

She wasn’t a leader, but her arrows pointed the way. In 1942, outside Lublin, a 17-year-old named Katarzyna “Katya” Edelman vanished into the trees after her family’s home was burned for sheltering fugitives. She carried a handmade bow and a small silver bird pin her sister carved from scrap metal.

Rumors followed: a figure called the Sparrow who carved arrows in bark to mark safe trails, who shot out floodlights from the treeline, who left food near hiding places and disappeared before dawn. Some say she helped more than fifty people slip through the woods. Others insist she never existed at all.

But resistance archives list a codename—Blue Bull—and one grainy, half-burned photograph: a girl in a wool coat, a bow over her shoulder, no smile, no fear. Ma ...