Pymonenko had read a newspaper account of an attack by members of the Jewish community on a girl who fell in love with a Ukrainian blacksmith and decided to convert to Christianity to marry him.

Pymonenko visited the town of Kremenets in Volhynia, where he made many sketches from nature.

A young girl in a torn shirt, fleeing from an angry mob, clings to a fence, a cross is visible on her neck.

Directly opposite her stands a man shaking his fists, wearing Jewish ritual clothes - in addition to the kippah, he wears a tefillin and a tallit.

The girl's parents are somewhat aloof: the mother is crying, turning away from her daughter, and the father has his right hand raised as a sign of the renunciation of his daughter.