On 22 June 1941, Germany and Romania attack Soviet Russia. Several days later, Curzio Malaparte, the Italian writer who would one day pen the novel " Kaputt", a war correspondent for " Corriere de la Sera ", arrives in Iasi, in the north of Moldova, on his way to the front, which is nearby. He is incapacitated by a severe allergy and his only chance of recovery is to find a Jewish doctor, an allergologist who had studied in Florence, called Josef Gruber.

All his attempts to find him are unsuccessful. Whilst looking for him, Curzio discovers that in Iasi, several days prior to his arrival, a violent anti-Semitic pogrom took place and that a large number of the Jewish citizens of Iasi were deported by train and that Dr Gruber may be among them. In order to find him, Curzio, aided by Guido Sartori, the Italian consul in Iasi, tries to obtain an official warrant to bring Josef Gruber back.

He confronts indifference, rudeness and the desire by the Romanian authorities to hide something relating to the deportation of the Iasi Jews. His journeys between the garrison of Iasi and its commandant, Colonel Niculescu-Coca, and chief of police Stavarache, are fruitless. After a confrontation with Niculescu-Coca, Curzio and Sartori leave in search of the Jews who, after several nights - during which many of them were shot in the yard of the police station were boarded onto goods wagon and sent to a station 20 kilometres from Iasi. Arriving there, Curzio and Sartori find a number of locked wagons from which moans and whimpers of people in agony are heard. Wanting to open a wagon, Curzio is stopped at gunpoint by a corporal.

The two learn from the corporal that the Jews who had died of thirst in the train have already been unloaded and are being buried in a nearby cemetery. Arriving there, before a mass grave where bodies covered in quicklime can be made out, Curzio learns that the man he is looking for, Josef Gruber, is among the dead. The next day, back at the hotel, Curzio receives a visit from Colonel Niculescu-Coca, who, apologizing for the previous days altercation, has some unexpected news for Curzio .