Set in Budapest and nearby villages, it depicts the German occupation of Hungary during the final months of the Second World War.

The story is about a young Hungarian-Jewish man, Elek Cohen (played by Jonas Armstrong), who dons an SS uniform to pose as an officer to find out the fate of his family and to rescue fellow Jews from the Holocaust.

On the eve of the German occupation of Hungary in 1944, as Nazi presence and anti-Semitic laws increase in Budapest, Jewish radio repair shop owner József sends home the two young men who work for him, Elek Cohen and Ferenc Jacobson.

They obtain forged baptismal certificates from a Catholic priest and urge their families to use them to escape Hungary when they themselves are forced to join the Hungarian labour service, in which Jewish men are brutally treated, shot if they cannot keep up or are injured while doing work.

Meanwhile, Horthy secretly negotiates with Stalin for an armistice with the Allies, but the Nazis learn of this, abduct his son, storm the Buda Castle and he is overthrown, later to be imprisoned in Germany.

In his place, the Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross Party assumes power, led by Ferenc Szálasi, who collaborate with the Nazis in rounding up Jews.

For months their fearless impersonation of SS officers allows them to pretend to round up Jews for transport while saving thousands by redirecting them to safe houses.

Elek is shot by an SS lieutenant when his son leaves a group of captured Jews to hug him and calls him by name.

In 2005, the memorial Shoes on the Danube Bank was dedicated in Budapest to honor the victims murdered during the Nazi and Arrow Cross terror."