It Was In May (1970) Timeline Explained – Every Event in Order

Rashke's family sleeps elsewhere each night because they are hiding something. While Rashke maintains a cordial, deferential facade with the Soviet soldiers, his wife and teenage son slip away to sleep in a different home each night. This mysterious behavior foreshadows the dark secrets they are concealing, specifically their involvement with the nearby concentration camp and the atrocities committed there.

Foreshadowing: The family departures hint at deeper guilt and fear that eventually connects to the three emaciated prisoners who arrive at the farm.

• rashke family
• nighttime
• secret
• soviet soldiers
• farm

The thick-walled room with large furnaces and ceiling vents was speculated by the soldiers to have been a boiler room, but its true purpose was far more sinister. Based on the survivors' later testimony about gas chambers and crematoriums, this room was almost certainly part of the execution and disposal process at the camp where countless prisoners were killed and their bodies burned.

Foreshadowing: The soldiers' speculation about the room remains unsettling until the prisoners arrive and confirm the camp's true horror.

• concentration camp
• thick-walled room
• furnaces
• gas chambers
• crematorium

The pig incident erupts because one of the soldiers is accused of killing a pig, triggering intense anger from his comrades. The situation escalates further when it emerges that the accused soldier is a survivor of a village that Rashke's family had burned during the war. Nikolaev must intervene to prevent violence, revealing how the war's traumas simmer just beneath the surface and how easily past atrocities can resurface among the occupiers themselves.

Foreshadowing: This incident reveals the interconnected web of violence that ties the soldiers to the very land they now occupy.

• pig
• tension
• village burning
• survivor
• nikolaev

Katarzyna was a Polish woman forced to work for Rashke on his farm until exhaustion and hunger drove her to madness. When she could no longer work, Rashke sent her to the concentration camp where she was executed. Her husband Stefan, one of the three surviving prisoners, recounts how she perished in the gas chambers and was cremated, with her ashes scattered over the nearby fields, used as if they were fertilizer.

Foreshadowing: Stefan's testimony provides the crucial link between the peaceful farm setting and the horror of the camp it served.

• katarzyna
• stefan
• rashke
• camp execution
• gas chamber
• ashes

Rashke sent Katarzyna to the camp because she had become useless to him after exhaustion and hunger drove her to madness. The film portrays Rashke as a pragmatic participant in the Nazi terror machine, he used forced labor from the camp and disposed of workers when they could no longer serve his economic interests, revealing the cold, utilitarian complicity of ordinary civilians in wartime atrocities.

Foreshadowing: Rashke's nightly absences and the family's secretiveness about sleeping elsewhere hint at his direct involvement with camp operations.

• rashke motivation
• forced labor
• camp
• disposa
• complicity

The three emaciated prisoners represent different perspectives on the Holocaust and German wartime guilt. Stefan, a Polish man, provides the most direct testimony linking Rashke to the camp and describing Katarzyna's fate. The German engineer prisoner speaks Russian and recounts the bureaucratic betrayal of ordinary Germans, including receiving a bill for his brother's execution. The third German prisoner, haunted by memories of guard dogs, represents the trauma and fear that persisted among victims. Together they embody the multi-faceted horror and complicity of the era.

Foreshadowing: Their arrival as Rashke departs creates a direct confrontation between the perpetrator's family leaving and the survivors arriving to bear witness.

• three prisoners
• stefan
• german engineer
• perspectives
• testimony
• witness

Rashke vanishes into the night when the Soviet soldiers attempt to capture him after hearing the prisoners' testimony. His escape highlights how accountable figures often slip away after regime collapse, leaving victims without justice. The film does not reveal where he goes, this ambiguity itself becomes part of the film's meditation on guilt, memory, and the elusive nature of accountability after the war.

Foreshadowing: The earlier detail of his family sleeping elsewhere each night suggests Rashke had escape routes and safe places already prepared.

• rashke escape
• vanished
• accountability
• nighttime
• justice

The film closes with peaceful postwar city scenes accompanied by Sonny Bono's song "Mama" arranged by Paul Mauriat, creating a stark contrast to the grim testimony and horror revealed earlier. This juxtaposition emphasizes the gulf between ordinary life resuming and the persistent trauma of memory. The gentle, melancholic music underscores that while the fighting has ended, the emotional and moral reckoning with the past continues quietly, much like the ashes scattered over the fields.

Foreshadowing: The opening wartime newsreel footage establishes this frame of memory versus present reality that the closing scenes complete.

• ending
• peaceful scenes
• music
• mama
• memory
• contrast
• aftermath

The film opens with wartime newsreel footage to frame the story within the collective memory of the war's end, establishing that this is not merely a personal drama but a historical reckoning. This prologue primes the audience for the moral questions to come and creates a documentary-like gravity before the narrative unfolds. It positions the personal testimonies that follow within the broader context of historical trauma.

Foreshadowing: The newsreel style contrasts sharply with the intimate, meditative closing scenes, creating the film's emotional arc from historical record to personal memory.

• newsreel
• opening
• historical context
• memory
• framing

Soviet reconnaissance troops are assigned to occupy Rashke's farm as part of the immediate postwar occupation of Germany in May 1945, days after Germany's unconditional surrender. The soldiers take up temporary residence in what appears to be an untouched rural setting, unaware of the dark secrets hidden there. Their presence creates the scenario for discovering the concentration camp and confronting the reality of Nazi terror that exists even in seemingly peaceful countryside locations.

Foreshadowing: The soldiers' search of the surrounding area leads them to the abandoned concentration camp, making their occupation the catalyst for uncovering the truth.

• soviet troops
• occupation
• may 1945
• farm
• reconnaissance
• surrender