The World Will Tremble

Solomon Wiener, Michael Podchlebnik, and fellow Jewish prisoners are forced to dig trenches in a harsh Polish wilderness under the watchful eyes of guards. The grueling labor sets a grim tone and cements the sense of captivity and danger surrounding them. The men cling to fragile hopes of surviving the brutal conditions.

The prisoners are marched to Chełmno, where Lange mocks them with promises of work in Leipzig that will never materialize. They are stripped of possessions and forced to gather the belongings of arriving prisoners, who are then loaded into a gas van. The deception underscores the cruelty of their captors.

The gas van arrives, and most of the prisoners are asphyxiated inside. The truck is brought back to the trench where the men originally dug, and the bodies are dragged out before guards shoot any survivors. The brutal routine demonstrates the mechanized horror of the killings.

Michael discovers that his wife Klara was among the victims in the truck, a devastating personal tragedy. Broken by the loss, he pleads with Lenz to end his life, but the guard refuses and forces him to continue with the work. The revelation deepens the emotional toll on the survivors.

After the transport, the work crew is ordered to move the bodies into trenches that are being used as mass graves. They spread quicklime over the corpses to hasten decomposition, underscoring the indiscriminate brutality of the operation. The grim routine continues as the prisoners are driven back to their bunks.

Due to transport truck breakdowns, the Nazis bring another Jewish escapee before the camp. Lenz shoots the escapee and pays the guards, and the prisoners grimly accept the growing sense that resistance may be dangerous and futile. The incident hardens the resolve of some to plan an escape.

Solomon, Michael, Wolf, and several fellow prisoners begin to plan an escape from Chełmno. They weigh risks and share the resolve to bear witness to the crimes they have witnessed. The plan seeds hope amid despair.

During an excruciating exercise, Monik drops a knife and is slaughtered by Lenz after spitting at Lange. The prisoners are humiliated as they dance for the guards, while shots are fired toward their feet and a female prisoner is accidentally killed. The brutality underscores the dehumanization inflicted by the guards.

Wolf is shot in the neck during the punishment, dying after passing a smuggled pencil to Solomon and urging him to reach Grębów. The act becomes a last-minute plea to carry on the mission of bearing witness. The survivors are driven by the memory of their fallen comrade.

Solomon presses others to escape, and Goldman and Felix create a distraction that allows Solomon and Michael to cut through the truck canopy and flee into the forest. The plan hinges on split-second timing and the chaos of the camp boundary. They race into the trees with the guards in pursuit.

Solomon and Michael navigate the forest, avoiding roads and Nazi patrols as they push deeper toward safety. They reach a river and swim across to shake off their pursuers, but Michael sustains an exit wound to his leg. The escape is fraught with danger and splashed with moments of fragile hope.

The fugitives stumble upon a farm where a kind woman provides them with railway uniforms, and they steal a Nazi officer’s motorcycle to speed their flight. The disguise buys them precious time as they evade capture. Their improvisation demonstrates a desperate resourcefulness.

Fooling a Wehrmacht platoon with their railway worker disguises, Solomon and Michael are forced to help pull a transport truck out of the mud. A field medic treats Michael’s leg, momentarily easing the injury and keeping their escape on track. The episode blurs the lines between enemy and ally as circumstance dictates.

Solomon and Michael reach the Grębów ghetto, where they warn Rabbi Schulman of the Nazi death camps. The Rabbi hesitates at first but accepts the gravity of Solomon’s tale and begins writing the horrific details. Schulman vows to spread the truth, echoing the climactic line that the world will tremble.