Gerhardt Klinsmann, a German guard stationed at Auschwitz concentration camp, anguishes over the man he has become. He despises the camp and his job, and, responding to an attack of conscience, he helps a pregnant prisoner escape. After the war, Klinsmann returns to his home in Kassel, Germany, determined to start life over. But he is accused of war crimes and becomes a man on the run, fleeing from a brutal past that haunts him at every turn.

Seventeen years later, Mikhail Krol, a boy living in communist Poland, learns from a drunken uncle he was adopted as a toddler and that his biological father was a German soldier. Devastated by this shocking revelation, Mik feels his whole life has been a lie. He vows to find his biological father and his birth mother, described to him as a mysterious, dark-skinned foreigner who sang to him in a strange language.

Mik’s commitment to discovering his heritage takes him to East Berlin and Paris during the height of the Cold War and eventually to Buenos Aires, Argentina-a journey that confirms his worst suspicions when he uncovers the shocking truth about his parents.