Germany, 1936: The Nazi regime has imposed more than 120 anti-Semitic laws and decrees, the latest of them, the prohibition for all Jews to export any objects of art. Fearful of these ordinances, Felix Robert Mendelssohn (composer Felix Mendelssohn's grandson), a solitary Jewish man living in an isolated house in the German Swiss border, is packed and ready to leave the country. But as the news reaches his village, and being the heir and owner of an invaluable Stradivarius cello, Felix starts to think his departure has been spoilt. But he will not be defeated that easy: For he decides to attempt what anyone would think not only impossible, but actually suicidal: To cross the border to Switzerland, with nothing else but his four-stringed companion.