When a Christian boy disappears in a fictional Eastern European town in the 1920s, the local Jews are quickly accused of ritual murder. There is tension in the air and a pogrom threatens to erupt. Suddenly, an extraordinary man'Moshe the dreamer, a madman and mystic'steps forward and confesses to a crime he did not commit, in a vain attempt to save his people from certain death. The community gathers to hear his last words'a plea for silence'and everyone present takes an oath: whoever survives the impending tragedy must never speak of the town's last days and nights of terror. For fifty years the sole survivor keeps his oath'until he meets a man whose life depends on hearing the story, and one man's loyalty to the dead confronts head-on another's reason to go on living.