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. For a long time threats and torture by SS men fail to turn up the boy who becomes a symbol of the struggle between captives and captors. The boy is eventually discovered and both he and the prisoners now face certain death. Only the Allied invasion and subsequent tank patrols can save the prisoners and their young friend from doom.