The Barefoot Battalion (1953)

In a poverty-stricken post-World War II Thessaloniki that's struggling to get back on its feet, a young man, Dimitris, catches Stavros, a street urchin, in the act of stealing a wallet. Intent on lending the boy a helping hand--and almost ten years after the end of the war--Dimitris recounts the powerful and heartwarming story of the nearly one hundred sixty orphans who were expelled from the city's orphanage by the Germans, during the German occupation of Greece. They were the reputed "Barefoot Battalion", a proud and close-knit pack of disciplined orphans, 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 impoverished people of the town. To them, stealing was an art, and a grave necessity; nevertheless, now that the war is finally over, what is Stavros' excuse?