Set at the historic moment of rebirth of Poland after World War I. The newly organized National Assembly elected Gabriel Narutowicz, a professor returning home from Switzerland to enter public life, as the first President in the history of Polish Republic. The film shows the turmoil leading to Narutowicz's election by a National Assembly divided between Polish Nationalists and the minorities, comprising one third of the population. A few days after the election the President was assasinated by a fanatic Nationalist while opening an art exhibit.
Captain Witold Pilecki was a Polish intelligence officer during WWII who volunteered for a Polish resistance operation to get imprisoned in the German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in order to gather intelligence and enable the Polish government-in-exile to inform the allies about the ongoing Holocaust in occupied Poland.