In 1939 the pastoral calm of the German hamlet of Schladow in Poland is shattered by murderous ethnic warfare and the full eruption of WWII. His civilian father, uncle, and many of the village's young men being brutally slaughtered by Polish soldiers for the offense of being German almost destroys the souls of young Edgar Bueschke, his siblings, their mother and grandparents, but they adjust and regain a semblance of tranquility. Yet by 1944, troubles...