Sie sind frei, Doktor Korczak (1974)

Poland during the German occupation. In 1942, by order of the SS, around half a million Jews are crammed together in the Warsaw Ghetto. There, the Polish Jewish doctor and educator Dr. Korczak cares for about 200 orphaned children. Time and again, the exceptionally energetic physician, deeply concerned for the welfare of the children entrusted to him, manages to save many of them from the death that has long since been decreed. But in early August 1942, the German occupiers order the ghetto to be emptied. This order also affects Korczak’s orphanage. The children are to march to the loading ramp and climb into cattle cars to be deported to the Treblinka extermination camp. On the Germans’ highest authority, Dr. Korczak is permitted to stay behind, thereby ensuring his own survival. But Korczak decides otherwise: he does not want to abandon the children in his care to their fate, and resolves to accompany them on their way to the gas chambers. To ease their fear, he tells the boys and girls that they are going on an “excursion to the countryside.” Korczak eventually dies with “his” children.