An impressive novel about the Nazi era. Four people, four life stories, four destinies: The radical Berlin anti-Semite Wilhelm Kube is sent as a general commissioner to occupied Minsk. The Belarusian partisan Jelena is to spy on him there as his lover and kill him. Kube's wife Anita aims to put an end to her husband's affair. The Berlin Jew Gustav is deported to the Minsk ghetto, where death awaits him. The lives of the four intersect tragically and culminate in a catastrophe in 1943.