The story about one man - an artist and an intellectual - who was imprisoned by two brutal regimes, the Nazis and the Soviets. 'The Professor' is a man who lives by his own personal version of the Ten Commandments. After miraculously surviving imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp through a bit of ironic fate, he writes a memoir of his life, which becomes the target of the Soviet censors. The so-called "freedom" of Communism becomes just as oppressive as the German concentration camp.
The main conflict is developing between the young talented scientist Romas Špokas and Karolis Budrys, who, by hook or by crook, is trying to occupy the chair of director of a research institute, organized for the widespread development of work on the implementation of Špokas’ promising scientific idea.