This is unknown to Hannah Silberstein, a young German Jew in the work camp with whom Tomasz is in love and who has recently discovered she is pregnant.

In 1976, interwoven scenes open the story on the day that Hannah Levine, living in Brooklyn, New York with a successful husband and their grown daughter, discovers that Tomasz, who for 30 years she had believed was dead, is alive.

In a daze, Hannah rushes home, experiencing reactivated trauma that she had shelved, unable to keep her mind on the evening's party and raising the concerns of her family and guests at her distractedness.

Cutting back to 1944, we see Tomasz implementing a plan for their salvation with the help of fellow inmates, gaining access to an SS uniform and paperwork.

Hannah, weak and distressed by the outburst, miscarries the same night that a car is ready to take Tomasz to Warsaw, where he must deliver the photos to his brother, who is in the homeland army.

Disgusted at this betrayal, Hannah leaves immediately afterward, taking a photo of Tomasz that his mother had kept framed in a place of honor.

Shortly afterward, the Russians show up at their home and take Czeslav and Magdalena to a Soviet work camp; Stefania and Hannah are left behind.

"[3] Pamela Katz, who wrote the screenplay, has extensively researched Germany's pre-war and wartime history but admitted to feeling some trepidation about the prospect of writing a film about Auschwitz, especially one that entertained the possibility of love and freedom.

However, her research unearthed four instances of couples who escaped the camp in 1944, the year in which Remembrance is set, and she incorporated into the script some of the facts she found.