For 60 years Gerda Schrage kept silent about her "first life". However, she decided to confide the whole story of her life to the journalist Knut Elstermann. Knut's grandmother was Gerda's best friend. Among Knut's family, Gerda is called "Aunt Gerda" and Knut still remembers well his first encounter with her when he was a little boy himself.

Gerda was born in Berlin in 1920. Being Jewish, Gerda soon had to leave school to work and earn money. She becomes a seamstress. When she is to be deported in 1943, Gerda decides to flee and live illegally in Berlin from then on. Friends and Knut's family help her. So Gerda initially continues to live in Berlin, goes to work and falls in love. In 1944 she is betrayed and taken to Auschwitz.

Through a courageous escape after the concentration camp was cleared, Gerda manages to survive and make her way back to Berlin at the end of the war. From there she soon goes to New York to start a new life and bury what she has experienced forever in her memories.