The Barefoot Battalion (1953)

In a poverty-stricken post-World-War-II Thessaloniki that is struggling to get back on its feet, a young man, Dimitris, catches in the act of stealing a wallet the homeless street urchin, Stavros. Intent on lending the boy a helping hand--and almost ten years after the end of the war--Dimitris recounts the powerful and heart-warming story of the nearly one hundred sixty orphans who were expelled from the city's orphanage by the Nazis, during the German occupation of Greece. They were the reputed "Barefoot Battalion", a proud and close-knit pack of disciplined orphaned boys, who took their lives into their own hands, every time they stripped a German truck of its food and medicine, to aid the Resistance and the multitudes of the town's impoverished people. To them, stealing was an art, and a grave necessity; nevertheless, now that the war is finally over, what is Stavros' excuse?