Thirteen-year old Hannah Stern is a young Jewish woman who is uninterested in her culture and the holocaust. She attends a seder at her grandparents house. She is annoyed that her grandpa Will constantly talks about her experiences in the concentration camps as she believes that that is in the past. Additionally, when Hannah doesn't want to follow some traditions like eat horseradish, her Aunt Eva consoles her and tells her that it is tradition. During the seder, she has to follow a ritual where she opens the door to symbolicly let in the Prophet Elijah. However, when she does this she gets transported transported to 1942 Poland, when the Holocaust occurs. Everyone believes she is Chaya Ambramowicz. Hannah notes that Chaya was Aunt Eva's dead friend name. Hannah tries to convince everyone that she's not Chaya and tries to find a way back home, when the nazis round her up because she is Jewish and take her to a concentration camp. They are loaded into trucks and driven to the concentration camps. The woman and men are separated by gender and age. Additionally, her hair is cut off and she is tattooed with a prison number. Hannah meets a young girl named Rivka at the concentration camp, and they become friends. Rivka tells Hannah to not draw attention to herself as that is the only way to survive. Rivka also says that the majority of her family died in the concentration camp. The two girls then try to survive the concentration camp by working with the other prisoners to steal supplies. During the camp, some men try to escape and they are killed. One of the men manages to escape. One day, Hannah is talking to Rivka and a couple of other girls. A guard spots them talking during work and sends Rivka to the gas chamber. Hannah takes Rivka's place instead, and as she is brought to the gas chamber, she is transported back to the seder. She notices that Aunt Eva has a prisoner's tattoo of the same number as Rivka's at the seder. Aunt Eva reveals that she is Rivka and had changed her name when she went to America.