In 1944, one thousand and seven hundred Hungarian women were transported in cattle cars from the Auschwitz concentration camp to the town of Walldorf, near Frankfurt, Germany. Without explanation, the women were put to work for several months under grueling, sometimes fatal conditions. In November of 2000, fifty-six years after the camp closed, 19 of the survivors return to Walldorf--most for the first time since the war. They arrive by plane and touch down on the very runway they helped to build more than half a century before. As they are welcomed by the town historian, the mayor of Walldorf, and a representative of the airport, they learn of their role in the runway's construction--and why its assembly had been kept so secret. This is a film not only of the plight of these women, but of the town that chose to forget its past. It is also the story of three young men in the 1970s who battled the silence and fought to erect a monument in honor of the women, and of others who took up the cause, including a group of high school students in the 1990s. Ultimately, it is a story of how a town comes to terms with its regretful history, and how faith in humanity is restored in the minds of a handful of women who thought they would never willingly return to the scene of such misery.
