In 1648, when the Cossack leader Bogdan Chmielnitski led an uprising against the aristocratic leaders of Poland, hundreds of thousands of Jews, caught between the rival armies, were slaughtered or enslaved. For Jacob, a Jew, and Wanda, a Christian, to fall in love in the wake of "The Great Catastrophe" was unthinkable to both their communities.

In 1648, when the Cossack leader Bogdan Chmielnitski led an uprising against the aristocratic leaders of Poland, hundreds of thousands of Jews, caught between the rival armies, were slaughtered or enslaved. For Jacob, a Jew, and Wanda, a Christian, to fall in love in the wake of "The Great Catastrophe" was unthinkable to both their communities.