In 1935 Berlin, the Weisses celebrate son Karl's marriage to Inga Helms. When Erik Dorf is unable to find work as a lawyer, wife Marta urges him to apply for a Nazi government job. Erik Dorf warns Dr. Weiss he should leave Germany. Karl is arrested and sent to Buchenwald concentration camp, and Dr. Weiss is deported to Poland. Erik Dorf continues to advance in the Nazi hierarchy.

Inga is desperate to reunite with Karl, but her parents don't want to risk hiding her Jewish in-laws. Rudi runs away from their hiding place. Erik Dorf helps Heydrich plan and execute his Final Solution. Moses and Dr. Weiss are caught when the Nazis overrun Poland. Helena rescues Rudi from a patrol. Berta joins her husband in the Warsaw ghetto. Rudi and Helena escape to Russia.

Rudi and Helena escape from a long procession of Jews being marched into Babi Yar. They are eventually rescued from a hayloft by a group of Jewish partisans. Erik Dorf attends a top-level Nazi conference in which Heydrich gives Hilter's orders of the final solution for all the Jews in Europe. Karl Weiss has been transferred to Theresienstadt concentration camp which the Germans use to display to the Red Cross officials and representatives of neutral countries that Jews are being treated kindly. Karl learns that his fellow artists in the camp are creating propaganda paintings by day while secretly drawing images of the brutal conditions of the camp by night.

Erik Dorf complains to the other S.S. leaders that the executions of the Jews are not being efficiently done. An order is placed by Erik for Zyklon B (a lethal gas) for use at Auschwitz and other camps. Inga asks Muller to denounce her and have her sent to Karl at Theresienstadt. Felscher sells four of the secret drawings done by him, Frey and Karl, which depict the brutal conditions at Theresienstadt, to a Czech gendarme, which the S.S. get a hold of. Felscher, Frey and Karl are called in for questioning and then tortured, where Karl is the only one who survives and is told he is being sent to Auschwitz. He sees Inga one last time, where she tells him she is carrying his child. Karl dies the day Auschwitz is liberated. In Warsaw, Josef is caught for setting up the clinic to act as a front to keep people from getting on the train headed to Treblinka, and him and Berta with Mr. and Mrs. Lowy are sent to Auschwitz, where soon after they are sent to the gas chambers. Moses joins the resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto and they are successful in holding back 7,000 German soldiers over a three-week period, until they are forced out via a gas bomb and are shot. In the Ukraine, Uncle Sasha's unit attempts to shoot up a convoy, but Helena is shot and killed and Rudi is knocked unconscious. Rudi wakes up in the Sobibor camp, where he learns of a breakout being planned by the other prisoners and joins with them. He survives to the end of the war and is reunited with Inga in Theresienstadt, where he learns that Inga has given birth to a son, who is two years old named Josef, after Karl's father. Rudi is asked to lead a group of Greek orphans into Palestine. Erik Dorf is placed in custody by the Americans and after a brief questioning commits suicide via a cyanide pill hidden in the hem of his pants. Uncle Kurt Dorf visits Marta, Peter and Laura Dorf and tells them what really happened to Erik, despite an unsigned letter Marta is reading commending Erik's service to the Reich. He then tells them what Erik and the other SS men really were - mechanical killers. In response, Marta tells Uncle Kurt they never want to see him again. Uncle Kurt says he will not be silent about the truth.