On Christmas Eve 1944, in a German prison camp, prisoner number 6585 read a fairy tale to his fellow inmates. His name was Giovannino Guareschi, and the story told of pushy crows, talking mushrooms, angels with motorized wings, and a boy named Albertino searching for his father in a magical forest. The music was composed by Arturo Coppola—a friend and fellow prisoner who organized a choir and even assembled an orchestra from the few available instruments. "The violins would come unglued and lose their necks because of the dampness," Guareschi would later write. "Voices struggled to emerge from that hunger, clad as it was in rags and cold." Yet, a masterpiece of tenderness and hope was born there—in a place where it seemed nothing could ever bloom again.