Coming back to Europe on a ship Lisa notices the face of another woman which brings recollections from the past. She confesses to her husband that she has been a warden in Auschwitz during the war, but she has actually saved a woman's life by protecting the girl from her vicious captors. Later a flashback describes what really happened: the woman was not the girl's protector, but a sadist who relished her position of authority and her control over the lives of the prisoners she guarded.