Witnesses recount the tragedy of the flight during the war winter of 1944/45. The Eastern Front is drawing ever closer. The German population is urged at the last minute to leave their hometowns. The great chaos of flight begins. More than 12 million Germans are forced to leave their homes in the German eastern territories as part of an unprecedented flight and expulsion operation. Hertha Balduhn, a young mother with three small children, struggles through the front line and escapes from the burning Gdansk. In a letter to her sister, she describes the flight from her homeland: "For weeks we were in constant danger of death. But death did not want us." The refugees experience unimaginable horrors. Corpses lie in the roadside ditches, and around them, villages and towns are destroyed. The refugee columns and trains are defenseless against Soviet airstrikes. Hunger and cold.