Buchenwald concentration camp, early 1945. A Polish prisoner named Jankowski, who has been on a Death marches (Holocaust) from Auschwitz concentration camp, brings a suitcase to the camp. When the inmates in the storage building open it, they discover a three-year-old child. Jankowski tells them he is the son of a couple from the Warsaw Ghetto, both of whom perished. Prisoner Kropinski becomes attached to the boy, and begs Kapo (concentration camp) André Höfel to save him. Höfel, who is a member of the camp's secret communist underground, consults with senior member Bochow. He is instructed to send the child on the next transport to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Höfel cannot bring himself to do so, and hides him. Jankowski is deported to Sachsenhausen alone.