Set during the occupation of Poland during World War II. Some German soldiers slaughter a woman, her son, and mother-in-law. The husband and his father escape by being in the forest. The husband decides to join the resistance but at the first meeting the Gestapo kills his go-between and chases him. During his escape he gets into the apartment of a pregnant woman in labor and helps her with the childbirth. He works in the typhus center where he is a guinea pig for lice after being immunized to make more vaccine. He goes to the hospital to end the misery of a man mistaken as him and tortured. He seems to see his own body and is finally reconciled with himself.