Later recollections occur as Polja is practically dead and Žana is urging Marija to rest as much as possible. These involve an early run-in with antisemitism: fourteen-year-old Marija, who grew up in the Vojvodina, was sent to the country to escape the persecution of Jews only to hear from a girl her age that she and her ancestors are guilty of killing Christ. She hastens home to her parents; her drunk father explains to her what is happening to the area's Jewish population, a truth she is not prepared to hear but then accepts. Soon her parents are deported, and Marija witnesses the atrocity of the Novi Sad raid, in which Hungarian troops killed between 3,000 and 4,000 civilians, in January 1942. She herself is hauled off to a camp soon afterward, where she meets Jakob.