Germany 1942. Concerning the plights of Ellen Kaempfer, a German Jewess and her sister, Betty, maligned and persecuted, robbed and beaten, and deported to a work camp in Poland Involved in this tragedy is a member of the German resistance, Elfriede Mollenhauer, a member of the German resistance, who takes a package containing Ellen's prized possessions for safekeeping, a crime punishable by years of detention in a labour camp. She escapes arrest by the Gestapo and later, still carrying the package, she has to endure the day and night-time bombing by the allies, and her husband, a deserter, forced to work for Wermacht intelligence, narrowly misses death in the Dresden Bombing. Near to the end of the war, Ellen and Betty are transferred to the extermination camp, Chelmno, and meet a death too horrible to imagine.