Frank Beyer’s adaption of the eponymous novel by Bruno Apitz, who survived KZ Buchenwald for eight years, is based on a true story: in 1945, just weeks before the end of World War II, the polish prisoner Jankowski arrives at KZ Buchenwald. He carries a bag in which a little boy is hidden. As yet Jankowski was able to protect him from the Nazis. Now two other inmates, Pippig and Höfel, hide the child in a room where the possessions of the prisoners are stored. They not only risk their own lifes by doing this but jeopardise the activities of the Buchenwald resistance, too. The boy however poses not only a risk but he becomes a symbol of hope and resistance in desperate times.