The film begins with our Polish main character,
Leopold Socha, rummaging through a house with his companion Sapek to look for the jewelry.
They are startled by a noise when someone enters the house.
Lurking at the door, they attack a Polish girl and a German guy.
The German threatens the burglars with a gun, but it’s unloaded, and Leopold takes the weapon.
Leaving the witnesses intact, the thieves flee.
As they make their way through the woods,
they see German soldiers chasing some women through the trees.
The thieves hide the loot in the sewers and disperse.
In the next scene, Jews from the Lviv ghetto dig a hole in a house's concrete floor.
They wrap their hammers and chisels in rags to reduce the noise.
Meanwhile, other Jews are being mistreated by Nazi patrols,
cleaning the streets and trading in a specially fenced market.
Here Sapek finds the Jew Mundek. He beats Mundek for selling him a fake ring.
In the sewers, Sapek tells Leopold about his girlfriend,
whom he suspects of having an affair with his neighbor.
The two walk around the sewer tunnels, where they hear a suspicious noise.
The experienced Poldek, who knows the local passages better than anyone,
realizes that the noises are coming from the ghetto.
The noise is not from the ninja turtles but the Jews, who have perforated the floor.
Once downstairs, they meet the Poles.
Chiger, the oldest and richest, proposes a deal with the sewage workers.
Sapek doubts that it is worthwhile to cover Jews under Nazi occupation.
The wily Leopold is in no hurry to hand them over: first, he wants to get a good deal.
At the same time, the Jews are planning to attack the Poles, since they have numerical superiority.
In the end, the Jews agree to pay Leopold $100 daily for silence.
In the evening at the pub, Leopold meets Bortnik, his Ukrainian friend and Nazi collaborator.
The Ukrainian boasts that he has been promoted to commander.
At dawn, a German convoy enters the city. Soldiers begin liquidating the ghetto,
loading Jews onto trucks to send them to refugee camps.
Those who rebel are shot on the spot.
Seeing all this, Paulina Chiger hurries home.
In her room, there is a secret passage that goes down into the sewers.
They all want to hide down there. Under the ground,
Leopold and his co-worker run into a large crowd.
They help the Jews, then lead them to a more or less spacious room.
Along the way, frightened people talk, curse, and argue.
After settling the inhabitants, Leopold and Sapek
leave and come across bodies floating in the sewers dumped by the Germans.
On the way, Leopold is stopped by a patro who is about to shoot him as a Jew.
The Pole claims to know Bortnik personally and is brought to him.
As befits a collaborator, Bortnik does his usual thing of mass shootings.
He orders his friend to be released and asks him to denounce every Jew he sees.
At home, while bathing, Leopold discusses the events with his
wife. She is convinced that Jews are normal people like themselves.
In the sewers, Klara doesn’t find her sister around, who has quietly escaped.
During the day, Leopold shops for food for those hidden in the sewers.
He pays for everything with the money he receives from the Jews.
Leopold takes the food to the hidden ones and calls the older Jews.
He shows them another shelter, smaller but farther from the main tunnels.
Here, unfortunately, a maximum of eleven people can be housed.
Chiger has to choose who to move in here because it won’t be possible to take care of everyone.
Returning to the main group, Chiger makes a list.
As they talk, the Jews begin bargaining with Leopold, asking to let more than 11 people come.
But Leopold has already made the decision.
The main character leads the chosen ones to a new shelter.
When he leaves, Chiger tries to negotiate to lower the $100 price
he has to pay daily, angering the Pole even more.
After all, with this money, Leopold buys food for them.
As they scour the deserted ghetto, the partners search for valuables.
Sapek finds two dolls to give to Stefcia, Leopold's daughter.
At home, the protagonist meets Bortnik,
who has received reports that Jews are hiding in the sewers.
He asks Leopold what he knows but is told that there are only corpses.
To make sure, Bortnik personally goes underground and has Leopold lead him through the tunnels.
Startled by a rat, Bortink fires. The shot echoes in the dungeons, alerting the lurkers.
The guy relies on Leopold to control in order to avoid walking in sewer water up to his waist.
Leopold heads with a flashlight where the Jews are huddled on the wall.
The man doesn’t betray them and says there is no one there.
Satisfied, the Nazis left.
The next morning Bortnik informs Leopold that the
soldiers have found a hiding place for Jews in the sewers.
Leopold is anxious to find out who has been captured.
Sapek refuses to help his partner in this case. As
soon as the Nazis suspect that they are hiding Jews, they will be shot.
Mundek throws the corpses of the detected Jews into the river,
accusing Leopold of bringing the soldiers.
Checking the sewers for methane, Leopold tells Sapek about the Jews,
but the latter pretends not to know what they are talking about.
Later, Chiger says they have no more money, but reveals a place where he has hidden jewelry.
At night, three Jews led by Yanek, taking all the valuables and weapons, flee the hiding place.
When Leopold learns of this,
he says he will not return anymore because they don’t appreciate his help.
In a rage, Mundek throws himself on him, trying to strangle him, but the others rescue Leopold.
Left without outside help, the refugees go hungry.
Mundek must sneak out to look for food, but he is caught by a vigilant guard.
Leopold also arrives, and the two attack the German and kill him.
Later Leopold goes to the sewers, where he finds lost children and returns them to the shelter.
The protagonist agrees to help the poor souls again.
Buying supplies at the market, Leopold learns that the Nazis have punished ten
Jews for one killed German soldier and shot forty other innocent Poles.
He goes to the gallows, where he sees Sapek among the dead.
One day, Leopold's new co-worker stumbles upon a hiding place for Jews.
He rushes to report the incident, but Leopold, having witnessed it,
comes down to take the group to another place.
They climb into a small room that leads to a single narrow passageway.
Chaja can barely get through because of her swollen belly.
It turns out that she is pregnant with Janek.
The new hiding place is under a Catholic church, and they must be as quiet as possible.
After dealing with the emergency situation, Leopold helps Mundek sneak into Janovka.
For a few days, he uses him as an assistant in the
carpentry workshop in place of one of the camp inmates.
In this way, Mandek will be able to meet Klara’s sister.
Mundek goes to the camp with another group. At the entrance, they are put on all fours, like animals.
It turns out that he has no cap,
and those who lose it are shot by the guards because they are unfit for work.
Mundek is rescued by a higher-ranking officer.
The latter scolds the lower-ranking Nazi for the unnecessary killing he would have
done. He explains that he can always shoot a weaker Jew and make the stronger ones work.
In the meantime, Chaja is about to give birth. The problem is that
they will be easily caught because of Chaja and the baby's screams.
Even if Chaja controls them, the baby won't stop crying anyway.
Leopold returns home and asks his wife to keep the baby, saying it is his brother's child.
The next day Leopold returns to the sewers,
where he discovers the shocking news that Chaja has silenced the baby in a terrible way.
Elsewhere in Janovka, Mundek asks the prisoners about Mania, Klara's sister.
In the evening, they talk in front of the fence. The girl
doesn't want to return to her sister in the sewers.
Back at the carpenter's shop, he changes clothes and returns to the sewers.
One evening a drunken Bortnik shows up at Leopold's house.
As the landlord sets the table, his daughter asks him not to touch the food for the Jews.
Intrigued, Bortink asks about which Jews she is talking about.
The girl shows him the dolls her uncle brought her from the ghetto.
The answer satisfies the Nazi, and after the visit, he goes home.
In the spring, Jews celebrate Passover under the church.
Heavy rain falls on the sewers, and the hut, with its only exit, becomes flooded.
Leopold runs from the church to check on them but
sees Bortnik with soldiers nearby digging the drain.
The Germans prepare to leave Lviv and leave explosive devices for the Russian army.
Leopold convinces them they should not do this because gas pipes are underneath.
If they burst, the whole town blows up.
The Germans don't care, but the officer orders Bortnik to check the pipes with Leopold.
If he doesn’t find them, Leopold will be shot.
In the tunnels rapidly filling with water, the Ukrainian sees crockery floating.
He realizes that Jews have been hiding here and Leopold has been helping them.
He also learns that he has betrayed him and draws his gun.
Leopold turns off the lantern and flees into the darkness while Bortnik runs after him.
A torrent of water carries them through several tunnels.
After regaining consciousness,
Leopold finds Bortink near the grate: who has been crushed by the blow.
Leopold wanders to the shelter, where he finds the surviving Jews.
Soon Soviet troops enter the city. Those underground hear
the sounds of fighting and talk of the Russians.
Mundek wants to get out, but Chiger doesn’t let anyone go: it is too dangerous.
Later, Leopold calls them from outside and lets them out. It's over.
The Jews hiding in the sewers go outside and see sunlight after numerous months in darkness.
Onlookers gather around the pale, dirty people as they emerge from the trapdoor.
Then Leopold's wife brings a tray of food to celebrate their survival.
We learn that Leopold Socha helped Jews take refuge in the sewers for 14 months.
Two years later, he was killed under the wheels of an uncontrolled truck while rescuing his daughter.
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