During Hitler’s rise to power, a young Parisian Jew, Sasha Rozner, performs his own auto-da-fe by throwing his prayer book into the fire. Later, during his time in the armed Resistance movement, he meets Ultima, a teenaged girl who informs him that there are two Testaments, the Old and the New.
Why does Religion impinge on his existence at a time when God is Inexistent for him? Why did the genocide strike down even Jews who repudiated their faith?
Ten years pass. Sasha executes with his own hands a Resistant who had become a collaborator and who is responsible for the death of his entire family. Has he committed a crime or brought justice? Unpunished, he marries a Holocaust survivor, with whom he has two daughters, who will be raised secularly. But the memory of Ultima soon rises to the surface, and with her, a son who has become a hermit on the mountain. Can this anachoret son help answer Sasha’s question?