Slovakia, on the eve of the outbreak of World War II. The family of the young Jewish Martin Friedmann gathers to celebrate his bar mitzvah and make a solemn promise that they will all meet again a year later around the same table; but the storms of war and anti-Semitic fanaticism will lead each of them down very different paths.
Schoolboys discover that if sitting in a certain rocky cliff area in the forest, they can memorize anything they read there for exams the following day. Turns out the rocky cliff has a cave in which they make an incredible discovery.
