AllMovie

The litany of the horrors of the Naza era in Germany is extended in this drama, based on a true story. Sixteen-year old Walerjan is removed from his close-knit Polish family in 1941 by the German occupation. He is assigned to labor for a German war widow on her farm. He speaks no German and longs to return home. He doesn't mind the hard work -- he's used to that. When he inadvertently causes some small damage to her barn, he innocently imagines that the worst that can happen is that he will be returned home as an unsatisfactory laborer. Instead, he is convicted on mysterious charges of "treason" and is shipped to a concentration camp. He survives that experience and hopes that now that he has been released from that sentence, he may be free at last to return home. However, he is tried again and is sentenced to death, under the paradoxical rules of the Nazi justice system.