In 1941, a Russian Jewish woman doctor lives in a small city in the Ukraine that was just seized by the Germans. She writes a last letter to her son, a famous Russian physicist who lives and works far from the frontlines at a Soviet science research institute. She writes the letter a few days before she knows she and the other Jews in the city will be killed by the Germans. She speaks of her life, her relationship to her son, her love for him, her student life in Paris, her failed marriage. She recounts the reaction of her Russian and Ukrainian neighbors to the arrival of the Germans, the various responses of the Jewish community, the cruelty and horrors of the occupation, the help of some Russian neighbors, the greed and indifference of others, and her slow recognition that her Jewish heritage is more important to her than her Russian nationality or Communist ideology.