Plot

After the death of her father, Hannah becomes concerned with the strange behavior of her mother. As her mother's troubled childhood is revealed, Hannah realizes how little she ever knew.

When Ruth's husband dies in New York in 2000, she imposes strict Jewish mourning, which puzzles her children. A stranger comes to the house--Ruth's cousin--with a picture of Ruth, age 8, in Berlin, with a woman the cousin says helped Ruth escape. Hannah, Ruth's daughter engaged to a gentile, goes to Berlin to find the woman, Lena Fisher, now 90. Posing as a journalist investigating intermarriage, Hannah interviews Lenam who tells the story of a week in 1943 when the Jewish husbands of Aryan women were detained in a building on Rosenstrasse and the women gathered daily for word of their husbands. The film goes back and forth to tell Ruth and Lena's story. How will it affect Hannah?—<jhailey@hotmail.com>