Dekalog 8: 'Thou shalt not bear false witness'

One of the more schematic - though no less fascinating, nor less acute - of the series, this concerns the question of choice 'in a moral hell'. An elderly female university professor of ethics is introduced to an American academic who is researching the fate of Jews after WW2. Sitting in on the professor's lectures, the American offers a story - which has personal significance both for her and the professor - for the students to analyse. A Jewish child, during the Nazi occupation of Warsaw, is offered sanctuary on condition that she obtain a certificate of baptism. The Catholic couple who have promised to help refuse on the grounds that they will not bear false witness, thus condemning the child to almost certain death. But, of course, that is not the whole story...