On 30. November 1943 the medicine student Elling Kvamme is arrested at a hospital in Oslo. He is deported to Germany by the occupation authorities along with several hundred other students. At Buchenwald concentration camp the young Norwegian (“Nose: straight. Hair: blond.”) is to be formed into a “model Arian”. 65 years later Elling Kvamme and his daughter return to Buchenwald. On the basis of her father's personal memories, Elsa Kvamme's film gives an elaborate depiction of the role of medicine under Nazi rule, the medical experiments performed on concentration camp inmates and the extermination of so-called “unworthy life” in the Third Reich. “The Doctors' War” includes interviews about the medical ethos, past and present, that reveal political implications of medical measures which go beyond the individual fate, and Elsa Kvamme has conceived her film as an admonition in view of the care of the sick and elderly of the future.