The Kid Officer

When an Austrian Jewish boy named Friederich Biermann watches Hitler's Anschluss victory parade from his penthouse balcony in Vienna, then gets locked into a dark closet at school by his teacher the next day, his life drastically changes forever. His once respected family, now penniless, escapes Nazi tyranny in Vienna, walking through the night into France, staying in a circus troupe squalid Paris hotel for eight months with little to eat. As the Nazis close in, Fred's parents scramble for passage from Marseilles to Palestine, sleeping at ship's bottom among the French Foreign Legion's horses. Haunted by his recurring nightmare of being thrown from his balcony by Nazis, Fred is traumatized by the upheaval of his childhood. Disembarking into the exotic, desert land of Palestine, the boy feels an incredible rush of freedom. Dreams of a free life are suddenly dashed, as Fred watches the British, under the Mandate, turn away ship after ship of desperate, Jewish Holocaust refugees. He is devastated by what he sees. Fred makes a courageous decision to take action, which alters the course of his life, and history forever.