During World War II, in the Terezin concentration camp, a group of Jewish children and their devoted teacher planted and nurtured a smuggled-in sapling that nearly eighty years later has six hundred descendants around the world that are thriving, including the one planted at New York City's Museum of Jewish Heritage.

In the face of horrific living conditions, Jewish inmates of Terezin concentration camp--artists, musicians, poets and writers--fought back with art and music. Led by conductor Rafael Schächter, they re-imagined a Catholic liturgical work, Verdi's Requiem, as a condemnation of the Nazis. They performed for Nazi brass, singing what they dared not say. Six decades later, a new conductor and choir take Verdi's Requiem back to Terezin to bring the story...

Follows the tragedy and triumph of the Weiss family of Berlin and intertwines their fate as European Jews with the story of a German family, the Dorfs, whose members include a high-ranking Nazi officer. Kristallnacht, the "night of broken glass" occurs and the Weiss family suffer a series of unspeakable tragedies in the aftermath.