With some reluctance, a teenage boy's family take into hiding a Jewish doctor who saved the boy's life before the war. Thoroughly Nazified by his education in the tiny Austrian mountain village, the boy is appalled by the idea, but his father insists. Combined with the growing attraction between him and an almost blind neighbour girl, a relationship gradually evolves between the boy and the 'man in the box', who helps to open his eyes, amid the ever-present dangers of discovery and exposure.