When the Nazis invade Amsterdam in 1941, singer Johanna Vos watches in horror as the vibrant music scene she loves is all but erased, her Jewish friends forbidden from performing with her onstage. Alongside her friend Jakob, Johanna helps organize the Artists’ Resistance, an underground network allowing Jews to perform at house concerts hosted by their allies. When Johanna hears of a Jewish orphan headed for deportation, she does not think twice. She takes the baby in as her own, hiding the truth from even her own sister, Liesbeth. Meanwhile, Liesbeth finds herself in a dilemma, as she knows of her sister’s staunch support for the Resistance, but her husband supports the Nazis. When a charming member of the Dutch Fascist Party sets his eyes on her, her predicament only deepens.

In May 1943, Marijke de Graaf and her husband are arrested and deported to different concentration camps in Germany. Marijke is given a terrible choice: to suffer a slow death in the labor camp or join the camp brothel. SS officer Karl Müller arrives at the camp hoping to live up to his father’s expectations of wartime glory. When he encounters the newly arrived Marijke, this meeting changes their lives forever. Woven into the narrative is Luciano Wagner’s ordeal in 1977 Buenos Aires, during the heat of the Argentine Dirty War. In his struggle to endure military captivity, he searches for ways to resist from a prison cell he may never leave.