In World War II, the Jewish Alexander Katan was deported by the Germans and died after three months in concentration camp Mauthausen. He was a deformed, handicapped man who was housebound due to his wheelchair. At home, he gave homework lessons, which is why he was considered a teacher - a job that was forbidden for Jews. His son Alphons did not know anything else about what happened. He visited the camp for the first time in 1994. He was greatly dismayed to see pictures exhibited of his father, who had been used by the Nazis as proof of Jewish degeneration. After a year and many requests, they were finally removed. The correspondence with the reluctant Austrian authorities gets a wry counterpart in the letters in which his father vainly opposed the occupiers. Director Hedda van Gennep interviewed the son, but also former pupils and partners in misfortune.
