MAN NO.: 217

In a German city, Soviet forced labourers are being auctioned off as if at a slave-market in 1942. For ridiculously little money young Tanja Krylova is sold to grocer Johann Krauß, for whom Sergej Ivanovič, a professor of mathematics, already works as a handyman. Both are being humiliated and tortured with petty arrogance and brutal violence, also by cowardly Rudolf Peschke, deferred from military service due to being “needed”, and engaged to Krauß’ daughter Lotte. During a vacation at home from the war, Krauß’ son Max and his drunk SS-friend get into an argument about “arisised” money and family silver. The sadistic torturing of the “workers from the East” reaches a new pinnacle. Sergej Ivanovič, the mathematician, whom stupid, cowardly Rudolf Peschke had wanted to cripple emotionally with systematic hits to the back of his head all along, is finally killed. Tanja, who once has been imprisoned in a Gestapo-jail due to an attempt to flee, decides to avenge him. In the July of 1944 she recognizes the killer among the German prisoners of war being driven through a row of set free Soviet citizens. The film, which was shot in Taschkent and Moscow, was hindered in numerous ways and was only shown in cinemas after the end of the war.