The story takes place at the beginning of the 20th century. Little Lojzík, whose mother was killed by lightning, lives on a farm with his father and an old farmhand. The harsh world has taught him to perceive images that remind him of his lost mother's embrace. He searches in vain among people for someone to whom he can once again become emotionally attached. He finds no support or security in his father, his mother's sister, or his stepmother Róza, even though she was the only one who showed compassion for the boy at the beginning of their life together. The only one who truly shares Lojzík's fate as an abandoned child is an ordinary chicken...

In World War II, after a period of living hell on Earth in the concentration camp of Dachau with other Catholic priests, Father Abbé Henri Kremer gets nine days’ leave to return to his hometown for his mother's funeral. During this period, the SS Gestapo lieutenant Gebhardt tries to persuade Henri, who was born into a silver-spooned and influential Luxembourgian family, to convince the local bishop to give up resisting the Germans and write a letter to the Vatican in the name of the Catholic Church of Luxembourg, convincing the Pope to support Hitler and the Nazi regime. The ambivalent Henri questions himself and the bishop about what he shall do. Loosely based on Jean Bernard's Nazi-era prison diary.