A Nazi plane drops bombs on her grandfather's farm, and Germany announces the invasion of Poland over the radio.

The Durr family returns to Warsaw and shelters in their basement as weeks of city bombing begin.

Papa dresses in his WWI military uniform and leaves to join the war despite Mama's fierce objections.

Doda and Bubbe arrive at the basement door seeking shelter; Lidia overrides Mama's hesitation and insists they stay.

A radio broadcast confirms Germany and Russia have occupied Poland; the family emerges to find their home partially destroyed.

The Nazis build a wall around part of Warsaw, forcing Doda, Bubbe, and thousands of Jewish residents into the ghetto.

Mama and Lidia enter the ghetto to secretly deliver food and clothing to the desperate people trapped inside.

Lidia meets a boy named Stefan in the street and realizes he is connected to the underground resistance through Ryszard.

Lidia watches from her attic window as ghetto residents throw explosives and fight back against Nazi soldiers in the street.

Lidia impresses Maryna's uncle Halama at dinner with her arguments for helping the Jewish people and receives an address to join the resistance.

Lidia makes her first delivery for the resistance under Drill and chooses the codename Cello.

The Warsaw Uprising officially begins; Lidia works as a messenger running between the Wola District and Old Town.

Lidia confronts Mama about never loving her; Mama tearfully admits she withheld love after losing Krystyna, and the two finally embrace.

Drill distracts German soldiers at the last moment, allowing Lidia, Maryna, and Weasel to escape from the arrest march.

After the war, Lidia travels to Chicago and reunites with Mama on her doorstep, ready to rebuild their relationship.

Uprising opens with Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939, forcing twelve-year-old Lidia and her family into their basement for weeks of bombing. As occupation tightens—stripping the family of their home and forcing Jewish friends Doda and Bubbe into the Warsaw Ghetto—Lidia grows increasingly determined to resist. After meeting resistance fighter Stefan and being recruited by Halama, she joins the underground movement as a skilled messenger under the codename Cello. During the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, Lidia serves on the front lines while also finally confronting her mother about their broken relationship, leading to a long-overdue reconciliation. Though the Nazis ultimately crush the uprising and arrest the fighters, Lidia escapes with Maryna and Weasel. Years after the war, she tracks down Mama in Chicago, and the two embrace at last, ready to begin again.

The major milestones of Lidia's journey from invasion to reunion.

A Nazi soldier strikes Ryszard with his rifle in the street for failing to yield to a German officer.

Piano teacher Madame Kazowska learns Lidia can no longer afford lessons and offers to continue teaching her for free.

Papa's former driver Mr. Katz visits Lidia and reveals that Papa is being held in a Russian prison camp.

Jakub Baker, wearing a German uniform, warns the Durr family that soldiers plan to seize their home the next morning.

Doda offers her old apartment in the Wola District; Lidia's family moves in after losing their home to the Germans.

Lidia watches a guard shoot a man dead in the street for passing a slice of bread to a ghetto prisoner.

Lidia secretly sells valuables and enrolls in an illegal underground school operating above a Warsaw shop.

Ryszard brings home a secret Polish newspaper, and the family learns for the first time that Nazi trains lead to death camps.

Maryna discovers a rooftop drainpipe that runs inside the ghetto wall; she and Lidia begin dropping food through it.

Officer Schubert slaps Lidia across the face at the train tracks as Jewish residents are loaded onto deportation trains.

Stefan gives Lidia a trial mission to count soldiers and gather intelligence; she fails and is told to come back when ready.

Mama marches into Gestapo headquarters to clear Ryszard's name and returns having successfully convinced them of their mistake.

On the trolley delivering grenades, Lidia realizes the elderly woman who asked for her help is actually a resistance leader named Gray.

Nazi soldiers search the apartment for Ryszard in the night; he hides on the roof for hours and nearly freezes to death.

Lidia, Maryna, and Weasel use Papa's gold cufflinks to buy boat tickets and escape by sea from Poland to Sweden.

As the Nazi occupation of Warsaw deepens, Lidia and her family face a relentless series of losses and forced adjustments. They lose their home, their savings, and Papa to the war, surviving only because of the generosity of their community—especially Doda, whose apartment becomes their refuge. Lidia finds small acts of defiance wherever she can: attending an illegal underground school, dropping food to ghetto residents through a rooftop drainpipe, and surviving brutal encounters with officers like Schubert. Her work with the resistance sharpens through a failed trial run with Stefan and a dangerous mission delivering grenades by trolley, where she discovers that a kind old woman is actually a senior resistance leader. As the uprising collapses and Warsaw falls, Lidia and her companions escape to Sweden using the one treasure she carried through the entire war: her father's gold cufflinks.

The everyday struggles and hard-won small victories of life under Nazi occupation.

Papa scolds Lidia for playing the piano during the bombing, warning that a single mistake now carries a high price.

Ryszard secretly tells Lidia that their parents have been listening to illegal radio broadcasts about Germany's advance on Warsaw.

Gestapo agents arrive at the Durr home asking about the car and Papa's whereabouts; Lidia lies to protect her family.

Nazi soldiers searching the home at night discover the hidden radio and warn that Doda and Bubbe will soon be sent to camps.

The family receives a letter from Papa confirming he is alive but held in a prison camp in Russia.

Lidia slips food through a hole in the ghetto fence at night, and a young girl's voice thanks her through the wall.

A neighbor catches Lidia sneaking food to the ghetto and confronts her angrily; Lidia backs down in shame.

Lidia witnesses a resistance ambush on a German truck go wrong and discovers Stefan is among the dead afterward.

Officer Schubert stops Lidia on the street and presses his hands against the hidden bullets under her bandages; she bluffs her way free using her armband.

Lidia plays piano at the Malkus home while Ryszard is ill with fever, then grows suspicious the doctor may be a Nazi collaborator.

Drill shows Lidia Ryszard's journal with a letter that stops mid-sentence; the resistance believes Ryszard died helping a man escape.

Lidia discovers a silent young Jewish boy hiding in the resistance camp, names him Weasel, and gives him her bed for the night.

Halama throws himself onto a dropped grenade to shield Drill and the other fighters from the blast and dies.

Lidia plays Chopin on a piano found intact in the rubble of Warsaw; the fighting briefly stops as German soldiers listen.

A wealthy British man hears Lidia play piano in Stockholm and takes her, Maryna, and Weasel to live in London after the war.

From her father's warning that things have changed during the first bombings, Lidia's understanding of the war deepens through a chain of shocking revelations and pivotal personal choices. She deceives the Gestapo at her front door, discovers through secret newspapers that the trains go to death camps, and learns the painful limits of individual courage when a neighbor forces her to stop helping ghetto residents. As she grows deeper into the resistance, each mission carries higher stakes—bluffing her way past Officer Schubert with hidden bullets, growing suspicious of a trusted doctor, and receiving the devastating news that her brother Ryszard died in the fight. The uprising's brutality is crystallized when Halama sacrifices himself over a dropped grenade, yet Lidia also finds moments of unexpected beauty, playing Chopin in the rubble while the fighting pauses around her. After the war, a chance encounter in Stockholm leads her to London, where she begins building a new life far from the ruins of Warsaw.

The key discoveries and decisions that shaped Lidia's transformation during the war.