NR
S1 • E1
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.
S1 • E2
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.
S1 • E3
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.
S1 • E4
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.
S1 • E5
Karl is sent to Auschwitz, for his role in the drawings. He is given 30 mins to meet Inga, who tells him that she is preggers. Karl begs her to have an abortion rather than let their child be born in such a cursed place. But the female artists promises Karl that they will take care of Inga and she will be fine. Meanwhile only 50K Jews remain in the Warsaw Ghetto, and 300K have already been taken to other concentration camps. Moses and his rebels still don't have enough arms to start a revolution. Slowlym they start fighting back against the SS troops. The rebels get a shipment of landmines from the Polish rebels. On Passover, Apr 19th of 1943, Moses and the others (400 soldiers) revolt against the Germans entering the ghetto for a last action, so they can determine their own deaths. Although they have some success (The initially force the German to retreat and the Jews unfurl the Zionist flag, which later becomes the flag of Israel), the SS eventually overwhelm the defenders (the war goes on for 20 days and the rebels don't have enough resources to hold out for that long), crushing the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and burning down most of the buildings. When Moses and the other survivors surrender to SS forces, they are immediately killed by firing squads. Rudi is shot during a raid, but Sasha saves him by performing an operation and taking the bullet out. Helena is pissed with the risks Rudi is taking. Helena insists that she will accompany Rudi on all his subsequent raids. At the next raid the Nazis were tipped off and they were prepared. Rudi's partisans are annihilated, and Helena is killed. Captured, Rudi is sent to Sobibór death camp. He meets Leon Feldhandler and Alexander Pechersky, and escapes with them during the Sobibór uprising in October 1943. He decides to try to find his family in Europe. Josef and Berta are separated upon arrival at Auschwitz. He is put on a road crew with a former patient, Max Lowy. But he isn't physically able to keep up and the engineer in charge, Kurt Dorf, allows him to rest. Using forged passes, Josef and Max go to the women's barracks to visit their wives. Berta has brought her music case and pictures of her children. Josef is concerned that it makes her too sad to see the pictures, but Berta says it gives her strength. The next day when Josef comes to meet Berta, she is already gone. Erik has received reports that his uncle is taking Jews from the camp to work on the roads, which is forbidden. He orders that it be stopped at once as the Jewish prisoners are marked for special handling. In contempt, Kurt says he knows what that is. Erik says that they need to keep on killing the Jews as stopping now would be an admission of guilt. Before the war can end, both of Karl's parents are killed in Auschwitz. Berta is last seen entering a gas chamber. Josef is also killed in the gas chamber (Erik is pissed with Kurt's judging attitude and reports to the higher authorities that Kurt is using Jews on road projects, against policy. The next day, the Jews are taken away from Kurt). Karl dies shortly before the liberation of the camp, found dead in his barracks, after one final sketch. Meanwhile the Babi Yar mass grave (100K Jews) has been dug up and all corpses cremated to remove all evidence. Himmler orders the dismantling of the camps in face of the approaching US armies. Erik advises Himmler not to erase the evidence as that would be an admission of guilt. He wants to Holocaust to be remembered as Hitler's service to mankind. Erik goes into hiding but is captured by the Americans. During his interrogation, he repeats that he was merely a soldier following orders. But the US have testimony from 24 witnesses that Erik himself supervised the killings. When he is left alone for a few minutes, he swallows a cyanide pill and dies instantly. Kurt visits Marta and the children, who insist that Erik was a hero. When Kurt says that Erik was a mass murderer, he is ordered to leave and never return. Sadly he bids them goodbye. After he is gone, Marta and the children light a candle for Erik. A celebration is in progress when Rudi arrives at Theresienstadt . He meets Inga and learns the fate of his family. Inga proudly shows off her baby son, whom she has named Josef. She and Rudi look at the drawings, which Inga and others had buried to keep safe. Karl's last drawing is among them. Inga plans to return to Berlin but only temporarily. She invites Rudi to come along but he refuses. He notices a soccer game in progress and joins in, giving the boys some tips. A man approaches him and offers him a job taking the boys, who are orphans, to Palestine. Rudi accepts and his new life begins. Karl's drawings, which had been hidden from the SS by Inga, were given to a museum in Prague as a permanent record of the Holocaust.
Rudi Weiss
Helena Slomova
Berta Palitz Weiss
Heinz Muller
Erik Dorf
Marta Dorf
Franz Lowy
Uncle Kurt Dorf
Moses Weiss
Heydrich