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Some prisoners in the Nazi concentration known as the Terezín Ghetto (Theresienstadt, in German) are rehearsing a comedy to perform for their fellow inmates. It is the night of the dress rehearsal, with a small number of their friends as audience. The play, called "The Last Cyclist," is a zany, slapstick allegory written in Terezín. The plot deals with a group of inmates who escape from an insane asylum and take over the world. Because these lunatics hate their bike-riding physician, they target all bicyclists and anyone who sells biking gear or is related to cyclists or has cyclist ancestors going generations back, pinning blame on them for every trouble afflicting society. Exploiting the growing anti-cyclist hysteria they are fomenting, the lunatic leader and her followers pursue and deport every cyclist and anyone who has ever had anything to do with bikes to Horror Island to be not-so-slowly starved to death. A schlemiel of a hero, who buys a bicycle to impress his girlfriend, becomes the lunatics' prime enemy. Complications - and subplots, including a love story - ensue, culminating in the lunatics' foiled attempt to send the last surviving cyclist into space in a rocket ship. Good thus conquers evil - but only on the stage. In the real world, as the conclusion of the film makes heart-wrenchingly clear, the Terezín actors and their fellow inmates could not escape the Holocaust.