AllMovie

Based on true events but at the same time a fictional account, this compelling, fast-paced wartime drama of two heroic resistance fighters in Holland deserves attention. Peter van Dijk (Jeroen Krabbe) is an accomplished artist who is thrown into the leadership of the resistance movement out of a series of tragic events. He leads military raids against the Germans and is at the top of their "Most Wanted" list. David Blumberg (Edwin de Vries) hits upon an imaginative and daring plot to save as many Jews as he can from the Nazi death camps. He invents a fake General von Spiegel who sends him lists of Jews who should be sent to Switzerland, provided they can come up with enough jewels or whatever to front the cost. The Gestapo buys this ploy, and hundreds of Jews are saved as a result (a true historical fact). Blumberg and van Dijk's stories become intertwined and expanded, filling in context and entertaining subsidiary characters as they go along.