The Nazis force Dita's family and thousands of other Jews out of Prague and into the Terezín ghetto.

Fredy Hirsch appoints 14-year-old Dita as secret librarian responsible for protecting eight smuggled books in Block 31.

An SS inspection party led by Mengele enters Block 31; Dita hides all the books under her dress.

Mengele approaches Dita alone after the inspection and tells her he will be watching her every move.

Dita confesses Mengele's threat to Fredy Hirsch, who tells her to continue as librarian despite the risk.

Dita's father is stricken with typhus and removed to the men's infirmary, where women are forbidden to enter.

Dita borrows a boy's jacket, disguises herself as male, and slips into the infirmary to hold her dying father's hand.

Rudi learns the September transport is slated for special treatment, meaning all 3,800 people will be killed.

Fredy Hirsch is found foaming at the mouth from a sedative overdose and dies before the planned uprising.

Sealed trucks carrying the September transport drive past as the condemned prisoners sing national anthems on their way to the gas chambers.

Ashes from the gassed September transport drift down like snow onto the prisoners still remaining in Block 31.

Rudi and Fred Wetzler escape Auschwitz, cross into Slovakia, and report the full scale of the atrocities to the Jewish Council.

During Mengele's selection, Dita claims to be a painter; Mengele pauses to reflect and then sends her to the right side.

British soldiers liberate Bergen-Belsen; Dita's mother Liesl dies shortly after from disease in a military field hospital.

Dita and Ota Keller marry in Prague and later emigrate to Israel after communism takes hold in the country.

Dita Adler's story begins in the comfort of Prague before the Nazis force her family into the Terezín ghetto and then to the Auschwitz family camp. There, Fredy Hirsch appoints her as secret librarian of Block 31, a role that defines her courage and puts her life in constant danger. As the family camp's true purpose as a Red Cross decoy is slowly revealed, Dita endures the death of her father and witnesses the massacre of the September transport. After Fredy's mysterious death and the camp's liquidation, Dita and her mother face a brutal selection before being transferred through Hamburg and finally to Bergen-Belsen. Liberation by the British brings survival but also the loss of her mother, and Dita ultimately rebuilds her life in Prague before emigrating to Israel with her husband, Ota Keller.

The central events of Dita's survival from Prague to Israel.

Dita meets Fredy Hirsch for the first time when Jews are relocated to the crowded Terezín ghetto.

Dita receives her first kiss from a boy named Erik while living in the Terezín ghetto.

Schmulewski reveals to the resistance how Jews are deceived with promises of showers before being killed in the gas chambers.

Rudi first spots Alice at the electrified fence when she approaches to ask him for pencils for the school.

A high-level Nazi delegation including Höss and Eichmann visits Block 31 and formally inspects the family camp.

Dita overhears Mr. Tomášek secretly reporting the names and locations of resistance members to an SS officer.

Eichmann falsely assures Miriam Edelstein that her imprisoned husband Yakub is safe and their family will soon be reunited.

Alice is bullied by women after Rudi gives her garlic; Hirsch comforts her and explains the women's fear and anger.

Dita's father dies of typhus; Dita and her stunned mother finally weep together in each other's arms.

SS officer Viktor Pestek begins secretly passing extra food and soap to Renee across the camp fence.

Two Russian prisoners caught after an escape attempt are publicly flogged and hanged as a warning to all remaining inmates.

Prisoners celebrate Passover with improvised food; the children's choir sings Beethoven's Ode to Joy while Mengele silently listens.

Block 31 is evacuated; Dita lovingly cleans and hugs each book before hiding them away and leaving them behind forever.

Dita briefly meets Anne Frank and her sister as neighbors in the Bergen-Belsen barracks; both girls soon die of typhus.

Margit and her father joyfully reunite at Bergen-Belsen; Margit promises Dita that her home will be Dita's home.

Alongside Dita's central story, a web of secondary events reveals the full human texture of the family camp. From Dita's first kiss in Terezín to Rudi's black-market romance with Alice and the resistance's grim knowledge of the gas chambers, these moments show how people found connection and maintained identity under impossible conditions. The treachery of informants like Tomášek, the cruel deceptions of Eichmann, and the public execution of escaped prisoners expose the constant moral danger facing every prisoner. Small acts of defiance — a Passover feast, a children's choir, a pile of cherished books carefully hidden before evacuation — stand against the camp's machinery of death. The arc closes with the horrors of Bergen-Belsen, a brief encounter with Anne Frank, and the tender reunion of Margit and her father that offers a fragile note of hope.

The secondary stories that shaped life inside and beyond Auschwitz.

Professor Morgenstern deliberately acts unhinged during the SS inspection, drawing the officer's attention away from Dita and the hidden books.

Fredy teaches Dita about the living books — teachers who memorize stories and recite them aloud to keep literature alive.

Dita secretly watches Hirsch meeting with a man wearing SS black shoes and fears he is a Nazi collaborator.

Dita discovers Hirsch is gay when she accidentally witnesses him kissing Ludwig the Kapo inside the school office.

Miriam Edelstein tells Dita she already knew Hirsch's secret and challenges Dita for seeking only comfortable versions of the truth.

Fredy's backstory reveals he was arrested at Terezín for sneaking into the forbidden area where the Bialystok children were held.

Dita's silent bunkmate turns to her just before being taken to the gas chambers and says her name is Lida.

Dita reads Švejk aloud to the terrified children; the teachers are stunned to realize it is a powerful anti-war parody.

Viktor Pestek proposes escaping with Renee, but she refuses to leave without her mother, forcing him to devise a different plan.

Viktor Pestek and Siegfried Lederer walk out of Auschwitz dressed as SS officers; Lederer successfully escapes to freedom.

Viktor Pestek returns to Auschwitz with escape papers for Renee but is captured by the SS and later executed.

Dita realizes Mengele never remembered or watched her at all when he walks past her without any sign of recognition.

Miriam Edelstein, her son Arieh, and her husband Yakub are all shot dead at the Auschwitz I prison.

Dita's mother is assigned to the condemned left group during selection but quietly steps into the right line unnoticed.

Dita encounters Ota Keller in a government document line in Prague and they leave together for the Jewish Community Office.

Beneath the surface of Dita's survival runs a stream of revelations and pivotal choices that reshape her understanding of the world. From the moment she realizes Professor Morgenstern's madness was a deliberate act of protection, to her discovery of Hirsch's secret love life and Miriam's challenge to her assumptions about truth, Dita is forced to confront the gap between appearances and reality. The fates of those around her — Lida claiming her name at the threshold of death, Viktor sacrificing his life for a love that could never be, and Miriam's family facing execution — deepen her reckoning with the cost of the war. The arc of revelations reaches a quiet climax when Dita realizes Mengele never remembered her at all, stripping away years of terror. It closes with a small, hopeful turning point: Dita and Ota Keller choosing a future together from the ruins of everything they have lost.