As Hitler’s Anschluss parade shakes the streets of Vienna, young Friedrich Biermann watches from his balcony—an early witness to the violent unraveling of his childhood. Locked in a school closet the next day and shunned by the city he once knew, Friedrich is thrust into a dangerous flight from Nazi terror as his once-respected Jewish family flees across Europe. Their journey carries them through night crossings into France, months of hunger in a desolate Paris hotel shared with a circus troupe, and a desperate escape from Marseille aboard a ship where they sleep among the horses of the French Foreign Legion.

Haunted by recurring nightmares and the trauma of displacement, Friedrich arrives in Mandate Palestine to the vastness of the desert and an intoxicating sense of freedom—quickly shadowed by new injustice. There, he watches British soldiers turn away ship after ship of Holocaust refugees, sparking a profound fury and awakening within him. In this powerful story of loss, resilience, and moral courage, young Friedrich makes a daring, life-changing choice that will shape his future and stand as a testament to the human will to resist oppression.