And the earth opened one last time

Alex is fifteen years old. Back from boarding school for the weekend, he reconnects with his little country village and his family, a family which seems to care more for its dogs than for Alex. This of course annoys him. He's better off without them. He's better off down at the cross-country motorbike track with Kader and the turning bikes. But he's obliged to take his grandmother's dog with him and it disappears into the forest.

In a forest in eastern Poland, an archaeologist digs to bring to light the traces of the Sobibor extermination center. Thousands of objects that belonged to the victims are emerging from the ground as fragile witnesses. This research must be completed, because the construction of a new museum-memorial is beginning. How can the Shoah be commemorated on its own site, today and tomorrow, when an era without witnesses is emerging? How does the Shoah continue to work on the history and memory of Poland, of its citizens, within Europe, in a conflicting political context? The film looks at these questions by showing and hearing the voices of archaeologists, historians, architects, journalists, curators, and visitors linked to Sobibor.

An elderly man is working tirelessly to revive the Jewish world lost in the Holocaust. His name is Aharon Appelfeld, and he became one of the greatest Jewish writers of our time. Every day, through his murmuring voice and handwriting, the survivors, the children of Ukraine, the peasants of Yiddishland come alive in the tiny office of a Jerusalem apartment. Aharon Appelfeld, solitary, wants to fight this battle to his last breath.