Hippocrates’s Oath

Arnošt Pospíšil, a physician and political prisoner serving a sentence in the uranium mines, tried to smuggle a medicine for a sick co-prisoner to the working camp. He is caught and sentenced to ten days of severe punishment in solitary confinement. Pospíšil, barefoot and barely dressed, fights hunger and cold. In the cell, he recalls his studies of medicine and his girlfriend Jiřina, frightened that the girl will certainly not wait for him for the ten years of his imprisonment. Even earlier, he had asked her to come and tell him if she would find another man. Pospíšil´s sentence in solitary, however, is unexpectedly halted after five days, for the prisoner has a permitted visit the next day. The only one who may arrive is his girlfriend. In the prisoners´ dormitory, Arnošt can finally get warm and eat his fill. His friends co-prisoners moreover ensure him an unprecedented luxury – to wash in warm water and dress in more decent "visitor´s" clothing. Arnošt then recalls a lecture on the Hippocratic Oath, obliging a physician to protect the sick from blemish and wrong-doing...The next day, a bus takes the prisoners who are receiving visits from the working camp to the town. Arnošt, full of hope, observes the first signs of spring and people living their ordinary but enviable lives. Groups of prisoners are gradually allowed to approach tables at which they can sit with their relatives for a while. Arnošt is the only one whom no one has come to see.