Fourteen-year-old Dita was taken out of the Terezín ghetto together with her mother and father, and now she survives in the Auschwitz death camp in a children’s block. The head of the block, Freddy Hirsch, tells Dita about an underground library and asks her to make sure eight volumes are preserved—books that prisoners managed to smuggle into the camp.
Dita agrees and becomes the keeper of these books.