It is November 10, 1938 when Selma Goldstein, a 7-year-old girl, has to walk home from her Jewish school in Oldenburg to her hometown of Wildeshausen in Germany. The Kristallnacht has taken place and it is too dangerous for Selma to stay there.

Almost at Wildeshausen she sees how her father has been arrested in a bus with other Jewish men and is taken away to Sachsenhausen. They look at each other, but her father doesn't dare wave for fear. Selma runs home.
Back home, she finds her parents' bakery completely burnt out. The windows of their home have also been smashed. Her Dutch-Jewish mother does not hesitate for a moment and from that moment on she does everything she can to get her father released. They succeed and the three of them flee to the Netherlands.

The Dutch family vouch for them and that is why they are allowed in the Netherlands. Unlike now, there are no refugee centers and they live with relatives in The Hague and eventually settle in Enschede.

But then war breaks out and a year later the Goldstein family manages to find a hiding place. Selma should be going to secondary school, but spends much of this time in a small room with a double door closet. Her father dies suddenly and is rolled into a carpet in the middle of the night to be secretly buried in an estate. It was difficult for Jewish people in hiding to find a doctor.

Open now! They narrowly escape the Nazis by hiding in the closet behind the double door. Selma gets a gag in her mouth and the Nazis knock on the door. Everyone is silent. Selma and her mother Suze survive the war, but not the rest of the family. They are murdered in Auschwitz and Sobibor.