Srulik Fridman, 8-year-old son of a Jewish Polish village baker, is separated from his family to escape the Warsaw ghetto into the forest and farmland. He must survive mostly alone in the wild by doing chores or by petty theft when he joins a band of orphans until they're driven apart. Life gets better when he's virtually adopted by a farmer, but when a playmate spots his circumcision, he must flee before the Nazis arrive. Frozen nearly to death, he's taken in by Partisan wife and mother Magda Janczyk, who teaches him to pose as Catholic orphan Jurek Staniak. Chased by another Nazi threat, he's sold for bounty, escapes from the HQ when the games-addicted CO leaves him alone on the estate of his German mistress. Foreman Pawel takes him under his wing, even after a horrible accident crushes his hand, requiring hospitalization, where his circumcision is noticed, so he must escape again, this time into the war's worst winter. Having been 'adopted' by the Kowalski farm family, the Soviet invasion and a Jewish orphan-spotter offer him a hard choice.
—KGF Vissers