Told from the perspective of man reflecting on his childhood in Prague in the early years of World War 2 and the eventual destruction of his family as the Nazis rise to power.
| Moving drama of a Czech-Jewish family on a collision course with the Holocaust
Although this film deals peripherally with the rescue efforts of Harry Winton, a British man who came to Prague and saved over 600 Jewish children by evacuating them to London, it is really the story of one of those children, and the family he left behind. When the film starts, in 1939, the Silberstein family seems to have it made. David's father is a wealthy and respected doctor, and his uncle Sam a world-famous violinist. As Hitler's Germany claims first the Sudetenland, then all of Czechoslovakia, however, slowly the walls begin to creep in on their privileged life. We get an excellent view of this life (perhaps a bit idealized, as seen through the eyes of the son), and the changes that force them to send their beloved son away to strangers in a last desperate attempt to salvage something from calamity.