A persecuted Jewish doctor, Dr. Braun (Miroslav Machacek), who because of his religion is forbidden to practice in Nazi-occupied Prague, calls himself a realist and has found a depressing job in a Nazi warehouse of home registration that is responsible for confiscating Jewish property–making him seem like a collaborator. He looks upon himself as an embittered elderly man who has nothing to live for, whose only joy is to secretly play the forbidden violin he keeps in his flat. One day, in his building, a gun shot wounded Resistance fighter stumbles into his cousin’s apartment. He’s the next door neighbor of Braun’s, a butcher (Ilja Prachar) by trade, who hardly spoke to Braun before, but asks the doctor to risk his neck to operate on the wounded man and doesn’t even offer a chance of his friendship. Though conflicted, Braun decides to do it for the greater good of humanity and performs the successful surgery and then tries to find him morphine for the great pain.

The search for morphine virtually defines the horrors of the times and the fear that grips everyone, as it takes Braun to a depraved bordello maintained for German troops with ordinary women forced to service the troops, a nightclub where the patrons try to put on a happy face to forget the war and finally to a Jewish sanitarium where he finally scores the drug. To conceal his patient from a police search, the doctor takes him to the attic. But he’s spotted by a snooping, fearful, slimy tenant, Mr. Fanta (Josef Vinklar), who is only too glad to cooperate with the authorities and be an informer. When the police come to search the building for Braun, they herd all the fearful tenants into the cellar. Braun soon arrives and proudly confesses he saved the underground fighter’s life, and then swallows a cyanide tablet. The police bring the tenants up from the cellar and make them look at the corpse, as they file past him to return to their apartments as the Fascist radio blares its announcements that it’s the citizen’s duty to turn in suspicious citizens to ensure everybody’s safety.