The time is the late '30s before World War II. Emmy Ritter, an actress who had fled to America, foolishly returns to Nazi Germany to sell her house. She is arrested and condemned to death, but because of an emergency appendectomy, she awaits the carrying-out of the sentence in the infirmary of a concentration camp. Her son Mark comes to find her and a dangerous plot is put into action: a plot to save Emmy Ritter.