Its an early morning in southern Germany in August of 1945. American troops have already arrived when a family is brutally murdered and their daughter strung up by her feet with "SS" carved into her back. Dave Gladbaker, a German Jew who had emigrated to the States before the war, is assigned the investigation. He soon discovers that the murders were a terrible mistake: the woman was thought to have been a fleeing concentration camp matron but was in fact innocent. The chief suspect is a woman names Karin, for whom Dave feels an attraction.