Léo is the two-year old, son of the acting manager of a factory on the brink of closing. When employees discover the news, Bruno, a more radical Worker who is willing to fight for his job, abducts Léo.

In a small Swiss village in 1942, a cabal of Nazi sympathizers select a Jewish scapegoat (played by Bruno Ganz) to kill, and an 8-year-old witness grows into a 70-year-old writer whose life was changed forever by what he saw.