Elsa Tabori is a polite and dignified woman who believes that if you do as you're told, things will work out for you. However, she lives in Budapest in the midst of Nazi occupation, and Elsa's optimism hardly seems practical when one is forced to wear a yellow Star of David. When Elsa witnesses the grim fate of Maria, a gentile who made the mistake of visiting a Jewish friend as the police were rounding up victims to be shipped to a concentration camp, she discovers that cooperation is no guarantee of safety — and that she must find a way to save herself before she's sent to her death. Fate, however, soon intercedes in an unexpected display of benevolence.