[2] A German high school student, Sonja (Lena Stolze as a fictionalised version of Anna Rosmus), wins an essay contest and embarks on a trip to Paris.

Her research leads her to discover that her picture-perfect town had been intimately involved in the Third Reich, with nearly all of the city's prominent families having been members of the Nazi party long before it rose to power.

Undeterred, Sonja persists and learns that there were eight concentration camps in the area, and that all the Jews were forcibly expelled from the town and had their property confiscated.

She resumes her research into the town's Nazi past and succeeds in winning court cases that grant her access to archives, although she still must resort to trickery to obtain desired information.

The hostility of the townspeople escalates from verbal abuse to death threats and physical assaults as they endeavor to silence her with increasing desperation, but nothing dissuades her.