In the last weeks of World War II, inmates of Buchenwald concentration camp hide a Polish child from the SS guards, hoping that the advance of the American forces will set them free.

As rumors reach them that the Allied armies are advancing on their concentration camp at Buchenwald, Polish prisoners 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 discovered. 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.—Les Adams <[email protected]>