AllMovie

This story of mistaken identity was taken from the experiences of writer Hermann Kant when he was a 19-year-old soldier in the German Wehrmacht. In the film, the soldier is drafted into the army just after the siege of Stalingrad in 1943 and is taken prisoner in Poland, where a mother has accused him of being the SS man who killed her daughter earlier in the war. While in prison he is given dangerous work in the prison yard but survives intact. Eventually, the soldier hears about the extermination camps of Lublin, Auschwitz and other sites, and has changed his feelings toward the army. Meanwhile, his case is coming up for review and even a jail companion from his same army unit is afraid to come to his defense because of possible repercussions. This film was withdrawn from competition at the 1983 Berlin Film Festival because of objections to its content.