Screenplay
The German conquerors are above nothing, not even the slaughter of small children, to break the spirit of their Soviet captives. Suffering more than most is Olga (Nataliya Uzhviy), a Soviet partisan who returns to the village to bear her child, only to endure the cruelest of arbitrary tortures at the hands of the Nazis. Eventually, the villagers rise up against their oppressors-but unexpectedly do not wipe them out, electing instead to force the surviving Nazis to stand trial for their atrocities in a postwar "people's court." (It is also implied that those who collaborated with the Germans will be dealt with in the same evenhanded fashion).
Writer
One of the few surviving documentaries about Jewish life in Poland before World War II, this film was produced to raise funds for the Vladimir Medem Sanitarium, an institution that stood as the embodiment of health and enlightenment, in striking contrast to the grim images of urban Polish-Jewish poverty.
