A Town Fights Back in Daring WWII Drama

The story of Holocaust survivor Emil A. Fish, who was nine years old when he and his family in Bardejov, Slovakia were sent to a concentration camp. A small town in Slovakia has the horrors of WWII knocking on its doors and marching through its streets. As was the case for many other villages that found themselves under the terrifying and all-knowing eye of the Nazis, the titular Slovakian town was business as usual one day and then thrown into chaotic inhumane acts the next. In this case, Adolf Hitler and his growing army didn’t even need to march to the South East to claim the territory as that would be handled by the dutiful Hlinka Guards who allied themselves with the Nazi Party and had a major hand behind the Holocaust in Slovakia.

The opening moments depict the calm before the storm as the faithful attend synagogue and mothers tuck their babies into cribs. An otherwise sunny day is shattered when young members of the Hlinka roll into the town center and order all of those of the Jewish faith to register for work. One man, a Rabbi and wine-maker named Rafuel Lowy (Robert Davi) sees that something must be done to prevent what’s happening elsewhere in the country from happening in Bardejov. When it’s announced that Jewish girls will all be moved to work at a shoe factory in the East, Rabbi Lowy calls a meeting with other town leaders to make a plan. Together, they realize that the young women aren’t headed to a factory but are being given the almost-certain death sentence of Auschwitz. Drawing up an unusual plan, the people of Bardejov come together as a community to save as many members of their town as possible.