The Honorable Judge Harry Shem has survived what many did not. As a frightened and traumatized ten-year-old boy imprisoned in a Holocaust concentration camp, he was faced with either a gruesome death or an invitation to become a Kapo, surgeon, and murderer. He chose the latter. Now forty years later, entrusted with sentencing New York City's most heinous criminals to their deserved fates, Harry is motivated by the sheer goal of being granted asylum into one of the Old Testament's Cities of Refuge. After arming himself with his previously learned surgical skills and the ever guiding light of the Torah, he ceremonially performs organ transplant surgery on the condemned in the privacy of his very own prison. When Shem's prisoners begin disappearing without a trace, he attempts to remain camouflaged. Unfortunately, the clarity he has enjoyed for many years is clouded by one man who moves in across the street-Da Commandant.
In order for Harry's mind to confront his past and protect his present, he must come to terms with the very obstacle that has thus far controlled his life and presently threatens his very existence-guilt.