Starting in 1940, the zealous French government and police force singled out Jews as pariahs. Maurice Rajsfus becomes aware of his Jewishness as more than the distant tradition of family who'd stayed behind in Poland. This administrative decision strips hims of his parents and his innocence.
This is a tale of four years in the life of a boy deemed Jewish by policy, who as an adult returns to probe that period of his life for meaning. Introspective, combative, this is an attempt to reconstruct an identity, that of a "deserter" from Judaism who still finds himself moved by Yiddish and undertakes a pilgrimage to his mother's home village to feel Jewish, for at least two hours of his life.