In prewar Poland, Simon Ruder was a respected Jewish tailor, husband, and father. When the Nazis invaded, his life was torn apart. Arrested and imprisoned, Simon endured years in some of the most notorious concentration camps, including Plaszow, Gross-Rosen, Auschwitz, and Dachau. Through unimaginable suffering and loss, he held on to the will to survive.

At the same time in Germany, Maria “Marile” Häusl was growing up in Bavaria. As a child, she was a member of the Hitler Youth, indoctrinated with propaganda and caught in the chaos of war. She even once presented flowers to Adolf Hitler himself. While she lived in relative safety compared to Simon, her life was marked by fear, loss, and the devastation of Allied bombings.

After the war, fate brought Simon and Maria together. He was a Jewish Holocaust survivor, she a young German woman raised under the Nazi regime. Their unlikely love story led them across the ocean to Cleveland, Ohio, where they rebuilt their lives and created a new future.