Matthew, a rich nationalist Jew and a contemporary of Jesus, regards the latter as an obstacle in this struggle to free their people from the Roman yoke by means of revolt. He incites the people against Jesus and prevents his own wife, a true Christian in her heart, from offering the Redeemer a drink of water at his crucifixion on Golgotha. For this act Matthew is condemned to wander eternally on the earth with every rest denied to him, even that of the grave. We go forward to Paris in 1940. Matthew, miraculously still alive, is now the young banker Matthew Blumenthal. Rich and powerful, it would be easy to escape from Nazi persecution, but he chooses not to do so. He wishes to share the lot of his fellow Jews and, with many others, is despatched to Germany and detained in a concentration camp where everyone is brutally ill-treated.