In the Wołyń Voivodeship in eastern Poland, the German minority is subjected to growing oppression from the Polish majority. The physician Dr. Thomas cannot secure a hospital for his patients, while his daughter Marie, Paula Wessely, who teaches at a German school, faces an important operation that cannot be delayed. When her school is seized by Polish authorities and demolished by an angry mob, the pressure on the family mounts and underscores the escalating hostility around them. Dr. Thomas voices his protest to the mayor, arguing for constitutionally guaranteed minority rights, but his pleas fall on deaf ears, leaving him frustrated and powerless.
Marie, Paula Wessely, and her fiancé Dr. Fritz Mutius, Carl Raddatz, decide to travel to the provincial capital to present their case to the Voivode, hoping for a formal hearing that never arrives. Unable to obtain an audience, they choose to remain in the capital to pursue legal avenues the next day, and that evening they slip away to a cinema for a moment of normalcy in a tense time. They are not alone; Marie is accompanied by her friend Karl Michalek, a man pressed into service by the Polish Army, adding to the sense that life is being forced into unfamiliar and dangerous channels.
The mood darkens when the audience refuses to sing Mazurek Dąbrowskiego, the Polish national anthem, and Fritz is grievously hurt by a furious crowd. Marie's attempt to get him to a hospital is in vain as he is refused admission and he dies from his injuries, a crushing blow that reverberates through their circle. Back home, the violence against the German minority continues to mount: Marie's father, Dr. Thomas, is blinded in a brutal assault, and Martha Launhardt, the wife of innkeeper Ludwig Launhardt, collapses and dies after stones are thrown by Poles. The ensuing years of tension culminate as the Invasion of Poland begins and German villagers meet secretly in a barn to hear Hitler’s speech before the Reichstag, an act that leads to their discovery, arrest, and imprisonment.
Marie maintains hope, comforting those around her with the belief that they will escape and that the Germans will be able to hear only German again, free from the encroaching yiddish and Polish languages. The prisoners endure abuse at the hands of guards, yet they manage to escape through an underground cellar, narrowly avoiding a massacre, and are ultimately saved by invading Wehrmacht soldiers. The German escapees prepare for resettlement into the Reich, and Ludwig Launhardt resolves to seek Marie’s hand, a personal pivot amid the national upheaval. In the final sequence, the trek resumes across the border into the Reich, and the film closes with a stark image: a massive portrait of Hitler set up at the checkpoint, a sobering visual that caps a story of persecution, courage, and displacement.
