son of a washerwoman, can translate Latin extemporaneously, but most of his classmates find it a struggle, including Jana Skálová (played by Jana Brejchová), who is in love with Vlasta, and depends on his coaching and crib sheets to pass exams. Her father is a lawyer and disapproves of her friendship with Vlasta, in part because Vlasta's mother does Jana's family's laundry. In the middle of their year-end Latin exam, Gestapo officers arrest three classmates, including Vlasta, without any explanation. Professor Málek visits Jana's father to ask him to intervene, and the lawyer eventually promises both Málek and his daughter that he will try. But as Jana discovers, while spying on her father, he is too frightened even to enter Gestapo headquarters, despite having made an acquaintance with a strangely friendly Gestapo commander—an acquaintance accidentally witnessed by a student who wasn't arrested, Honza Horák (Petr Kostka), who is trying to help Jana find out what's happening to Vlasta and his companions. After Jana tells Professor Málek of her father's loss of nerve, he visits the Gestapo commander himself at his home. To Málek's surprise, the commander says that when he was in the boy scouts, he was taught to do a good deed every day, and that he'll do one for Málek. But by the time he returns to his office, the three boys have already been sentenced and taken away to be shot. To save face, the Gestapo office reassures Málek that "the matter has been settled," and Jana carries the reassurance to Vlasta's mother, reaching her just as the Nazis are announcing her son's execution over the town's loudspeakers. In a final scene, at the school, the German teacher, eager to curry favor with the Nazis, insists that Málek deliver a lecture warning his students against the mockery of Heydrich committed by their late classmates. Instead, risking his own life, the teacher declares to the class that "From the standpoint of higher moral principles the murder of a tyrant is not a crime!" Cast František Smolík as Professor Málek Jana Brejchová as Student Jana Ivan Mistrík as Student Vlastík Alexander Postler as Student Karel Jan Šmíd as Student Frantík Petr Kostka as student Honza Bohuš Záhorský as High school principal Hannjo Hasse as Gestapo officer Rudolf Hrušínský as Collaborator Zajíček References External links 1960 films Czech war films Films about Operation Anthropoid 1960 war films Czech World War