Silke Hassler

In April 1945, as Jewish prisoners on a death march from Hungary reach an abandoned barn near an Austrian village, their SS guards vanish, leaving them starving, freezing and helpless while villagers remain divided over their fate. Desperate for food and hope, a former Budapest opera singer among them devises a plan: with fellow inmates and willing villagers, they stage Johann Strauss’s “Wiener Blut” in the barn to earn the means to survive.

In April 1945, as Jewish prisoners on a death march from Hungary reach an abandoned barn near an Austrian village, their SS guards vanish, leaving them starving, freezing and helpless while villagers remain divided over their fate. Desperate for food and hope, a former Budapest opera singer among them devises a plan: with fellow inmates and willing villagers, they stage Johann Strauss’s “Wiener Blut” in the barn to earn the means to survive.