Poland. 1944. Alfred Mendl and his family are brought on a crowded train to a Nazi concentration camp after being caught trying to flee Paris with forged papers. His family is torn away from him on arrival, his life s work burned before his eyes. To the guards, he is just another prisoner, but in fact Mendl a renowned physicist holds knowledge that only two people in the world possess. And the other is already at work for the Nazi war machine."