August 1938: On the banks of the Prut River in Romania, summer vacationers, predominantly secularized Jews, gather, including a writer, a fortune teller, and a woman who was previously involved with a Christian and is now on the lookout for men. Ten-year-old Erwin and his parents are also there, but the child senses that something is different: behind the summer pleasures, the bathing excursions, and the flirtations, the world as everyone knows it is coming to an end. Some leave early, while others suppress the news from the West. Tensions arise, even between the parents—the mother, who reads novels, believes in God, and in goodness, and the father, the engineer, who sees everything rationally and pessimistically. As the family sets off for the city, Erwin is overcome with fear. At school, he was beaten and called a "dirty Jew"—and he begins to suspect that there is something different at play.