Anita, a Hungarian-born teenaged survivor of Auschwitz, is taken in by her only living relative: Monika, her father’s sister, who does not want to be called aunt and sees the arrival of her niece as a weight to be borne.
In Zvikovez, amidst the Czech mountains not far from Prague, Monika lives with her husband, Aron, their infant son, Roby, and Aron’s brother the young and attractive Eli whose philosophy is crass: “men pull their pants down, women think of love”.
In that village of the Sudetenland, territories previously occupied by the Germans, Nazis are forcefully repatriated and survivors transferred to their homes in a tense situation escalating with the advent of communism.
Around Anita men and women want to slam the door on the past, to dance, have fun, listen in secret to the American songs that Voice of America broadcasts behind the Iron Curtain. Anita dreams like everyone else, but unlike them she bares her soul.
The girl is feisty and full of enthusiasm. Her strength comes from remembering her parents, dead in the concentration camp. But in her new home she will have to deal with an unexpected reality: no one, not even Eli, whom she will come to love, wants to remember the past. The biggest taboo is talking about having lived in a camp, as if it were something to be ashamed of.
