Ballad about a Birth

The whole family has gathered around the bed of sick, old Martin along with his friend, the family's physician. Martin dies and the doctor leaves on his sledge through the snow-covered mountains to see a woman delivering a child. On the way, he picks up a group of village musicians who had been waiting in vain for the bus. Their double bass falls on the ground and breaks. This reminds the doctor of another double bass that was hiding medicine for the partisans and got shot to pieces. It was during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia when the Germans were cruelly pursuing villagers for helping partisans. Villager Jožka comes to a partisan bunker in the mountains to ask the doctor to help his wife, who has begun to have great difficulties in delivering a child. Commander Martin does not want to endanger his comrades-in-arms and bars the doctor from going to the village. However, Martin is eventually brought round and four people set off to help the delivering woman - her husband Jožka, the doctor, Martin and the female partisan Růža. They reach the cottage at the same time that SS soldiers invade the village and begin to shoot its inhabitants. One stray bullet kills the young woman, who has just delivered the child. Jožka dies, too. Martin lays down a covering fire while the doctor and Růža take the newborn baby and flee back to the mountains, but he is severely wounded. The childbirth to which the doctor is going now, however, is over before his arrival and when he gets there the young woman is peacefully embracing her baby.