On the day of Germany's attack on the USSR Zina Vorobyova, a resident of Belorussia, is born the son of Gene. After a while they get to Auschwitz, where after quarantine they are resettled in different barracks, but Zina, as far as possible, always visits Gene and feeds him. Toward the end of the war, because of the Soviet offensive, Zina falls into the Marsh of Death, and when she leaves she is horrified to see that the barrack in which her son is located is boarded up - the children are clearly going to kill. Then, after the war, during the return, Zina finds out from her husband's friend who happened to meet on unexpected occasions that he died on the very first day of the war, and from shock he loses sight. She struggles to recover, settles in Leningrad, where she then starts working in a quality laboratory at a TV production plant, but does not give up trying to find Gena, because she is sure that he is alive. She constantly sends inquiries to Poland to the Auschwitz museum, when she learns that this organization actively helps in search of the missing children of the former prisoners of the camp. Once she sees on TV newsreels about Auschwitz, shot by Soviet soldiers after liberation, and finds out in the crowd of liberated children to Gena.