Based on a true story and the play Jedem das Seine by Silke Hassler and Peter Turrini, this touching film tells the story of a group of 20 Hungarian Jews who become stranded in an Austrian village during the last days of the war in 1945. When their march is delayed as the SS chain of command is broken, the group finds refuge in a barn owned by a local couple. Prisoner Lou Gandolf, an opera singer from Budapest, persuades his fellows in misery to rehearse the operetta Wiener Blut.