When the Nazis seize power and brutally crush all opposition, Mamlock is forced to leave his clinic for Jews are no longer allowed to practice medicine.

Mamlock, broken and humiliated, attempts suicide; at the last moment, an SA man arrives and convinces him to operate once more, to save the life of a high-ranking Nazi, promising that his rights will be restored.

Professor Mamlock, who hears the commotion from his house, carries a speech calling on the people to resist, having finally realized that his political apathy was a mistake.

Director Rappaport saw it in a Moscow theater and decided to adapt it to screen, albeit with considerable differences form Wolf's play: among others, portraying the protagonist being executed rather than committing suicide.

[1] Georges Sadoul recalled the playwright told him that during World War II, he visited a Red Army unit at the front; many of those present watched the film.

He was asked to recount the plot of Professor Mamlock, which he did based on the play — "the soldiers judged his summary so inaccurate that he might have been shot" had an officer not recognized him.

[5] On 15 April 1939, about eight months after its release, Chairman of the State Cinema Committee Semen Dukelsky reported in a memorandum that Professor Mamlock was already viewed by some 16 million people in the Soviet Union.

When the distributors presented the board with the picture on 12 May 1939 - in the hope that Czechoslovakia's occupation by Germany would change the censors' position - it took two weeks to agree to bar it from the cinemas of the United Kingdom.

Nugent described the film as "engrossing, sincere, admirably played" but added that because of the "Soviets' insistence on throwing a clove of propaganda... None of its virtues completely counterbalances the burden."

[17] Edward G. Robinson later declared: "I would give my teeth to do an American version of Professor Mamlock, that great story of a Jewish doctor in Nazi Germany".

"[1] Author Kenneth R. M. Short considered the film as part of the Soviet anti-German propaganda campaign that took place between Hitler's rise to power and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.

[20] Patricia Erens also viewed the picture as having "a clearly communist message" but as addressing the Jewish question directly, more than as merely a setting for expressing political ideals: "it clearly singles out Jews as enemies of the Third Reich".