Fourteen-year-old Dita was taken from the Terezin ghetto along with her mother and father, and now she's surviving in the children's block of the Auschwitz death camp. The block leader, Fredi Hirsch, tells Dita about an underground library and asks her to oversee the safekeeping of eight valuable volumes that prisoners managed to smuggle into the camp. Dita agrees and becomes the custodian of these books.