Winter 1944 in Germany.
Many on the Rhine thought the war was coming to an end.
That's why master baker Vincken brought his bombed-out family, his wife and their twelve-year-old son Fritz to an area called Hürtgenwald, where he had been conscripted to bake bread for the Wehrmacht.
After hours of driving through the night, he took them in a jeep to an empty hut hidden in a clearing.
But the front stiffened.
In December, there was even a counter-offensive.
Deeply snowed in, the two of them continued to hold out in the hut.
But the father found it increasingly difficult to provide for his family.
And so Christmas Eve 1944 arrived.