The film tells the story of the communal memory of killings that took place after World War II in the Dębrzyna forest in south-east Poland. It was a time when many people were returning from far-flung corners of the world. They had no idea that they might become victims of the attacks being perpetrated by the marauding bandits who had overrun the area. The returnees were hurled from trains, robbed and murdered. It was as if they had joined the numbers of those killed during the war. The residents of the nearby villages knew what was going on in the forest, but they never intervened because, as they themselves say, they were “living in fear.”