One of the narratives in Everything is Illuminated takes place in a fictional shtetl in Ukraine called Trachimbrod, or Sofiowka. The shtetl created by Jonathan Safran Foer is modeled on an actual village called Trochenbrod, or Zofiowka. Trochenbrod was a small, entirely Jewish shtetl with a population of about 4,000 at the beginning of World War II. The village, mainly an agricultural community, was originally founded in 1835, established on a parcel of land donated specifically for Jewish settlement by Sofie, wife of Czar Paul I. Trochenbrod’s site lies on a disputed border; during World War II, it was located in Poland, but currently it is located in western Ukraine, about 20 miles from Lutsk. Trochenbrod was a thriving Jewish community up until the events of World War II.

In June of 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union and soon after established a ghetto in Trochenbrod. In addition to the town’s existing Jewish inhabitants, the Nazis relocated Jewish people from several neighboring towns to Trochenbrod. In 1942, over a period of two months, the Nazis began a series of systematic massacres that resulted in the murder of over 5,000 Jews who were living in Trochenbrod.