The peace of Skokie, a comfortable suburban village located just north of Chicago, is threatened when Frank Collin, a politically astute neo-Nazi organizer, selects the place as the site of his next rally.

The Jewish community decides to stand against the rally at all costs to make sure that the Holocaust will never be forgotten or allowed to happen again.

Moderate leaders Bert Silverman and Abbot Rosen advise the Jewish community to ignore the neo-Nazis; the strategy they put forward is "quarantine", isolating the meeting by totally ignoring the neo-Nazi presence and refusing to be provoked.

A Holocaust survivor, Max Feldman, says that he was told to ignore the Nazis nearly 40 years ago in Germany, and before he knew it he was in a concentration camp.

For example, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawyer "Herb Lewisohn" (played by actor John Rubinstein) is fictional, apparently based on attorney (and later law professor) David A. Goldberger who argued the case in real life,[1] while ACLU national lawyer Aryeh Neier (played by actor Stephen D. Newman) is a real person.