Herbert and Lotte Strauss are a Jewish couple who escaped Nazi Germany's persecution with the help of neighbors and Berliners who were not Jews. They managed to cross over into Switzerland, and then in 1943, they went to the United States where Herbert became a history professor at the City College of New York. The couple decided to go back to Wurzburg, their hometown, and revisit the past, remembering the events that led to the deaths of their relatives who were not so lucky or as determined as they were. They emphasize that when the Nazis started to round up Jewish citizens, many Jews and other Germans did not realize the full extent to which ethnic destruction would be implemented.