An English version of the extant parts of Kruk's papers, including his diary and his chronicles of the Vilna ghetto (written in fictionalized form). The diary covers the periods from September 1939 to summer 1940 (Kruk's escape from Warsaw to Vilna), 23 June 1941 to 14 July 1943 (his experience in the ghetto of Vilna), and July-September 1944 (his incarceration in the labor camps of Klooga and Lagedi in Estonia). Concerning the Vilna ghetto, Kruk describes Nazi anti-Jewish measures, daily life in the ghetto, and resistance attempts. Dwells on the activities of the Judenrat, cultural life in the ghetto (where Kruk was a librarian), and the fate of the YIVO collections during the Nazi occupation. Mentions events in nearby Jewish towns (e.g. Lida, Oshmyany, Baranovichi). Kruk was killed in Lagedi; his papers were found after the liberation.

It is set in the summer of 1931, when twenty-year-old Nora Krieger returns to her small-town home in Lithuania from university in Berlin ready to present her new, mature self. Instead, her time at home becomes a period of unrequited love, difficult memories and introspection. Hopeful that her long wallks and intellectual banter with Albert Arin will lead to romance. Nora must abandon the notion when she discovers Arin's affair with his daughter's friend. Determined to come to terms with her relationship with her father, who was driven to madness after being tortured in the First World War, Nora must confront her own fear of losing her sanity. Young, educated and Jewish, she must accept the limits imposed on her by a class-conscious, increasingly anti-Semitic society.