About the title
Based on Vyacheslav Kondratyev's novella "Sashka." Among old letters and photographs, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War finds his diary. As the old man leafs through it, his memories carry him straight back into the inferno of war. Amid fire, blood and mud, amid savage hatred and enmity, he - then still a young soldier named Sashka - captures a German boy just like himself with his bare hands in a terrifying battle. The German expects to be killed, but Sashka gives him his word that the Russians don't shoot prisoners. At regimental headquarters, the battalion commander, whose girlfriend was killed that morning during the shelling of a village, furiously orders the captured fascist to be shot. The Russian soldier is faced with a choice.