As rumors reach them that the Allied armies are advancing on their concentration camp at Buchenwald, Polish prosoners renew their feeble hope for survival and freedom. When a group of prisoners is transferred from Auschwitz, a four-year-old child is smuggled into the camp in a valise. Born at Auschwitz, he is Jewish and will be killed if discovred. A group of prisoners decide to protect the child, from the searching Germans, and although the kapos cannot smuggle the boy out of Buchenwald, they manage to hide him---moving from one place to another within the camp as the Nazis comb it. Threats and torture by SS men fail to turn up the boy who becomes a symbol of the struggle between captives and captors.

Wolfgang Lagerhoff, himself a former concentration camp prisoner, was first asked to direct the movie, but he could not find the time necessary. It was then offered Frank Beyer, who had already done two historic and unique war movies (F￿tronenh￿1960, K￿skinder 1962)