The Gateway of Europe

The film is set in January 1918, in the area between the Masurian Lake District and the peat bogs of Polesie — land traversed by the Napoleonic army on its way to Moscow, by Tsarist soldiers moving west, and by the Bolshevik army following the revolution. The titular Gateway of Europe is an old manor house adapted into a Polish Army hospital. Three young Red Cross paramedics — Zosia, Hala, and Irena — decide that their place is in the field hospital in Cichinicze. Injured soldiers are evacuated before the Bolshevik army enters Poland, but there aren’t enough sleighs for everyone. The girls volunteer to stay with a handful of remaining patients, not realising what horrors await them.

The film is based on the non-fiction book Szpital w Cichiniczach by Melchior Wańkowicz.