Olek is the young son of and , who is five years old at the beginning of the German occupation of Cracow. He is initially hidden so that he will not be taken to the concentration camp, but eventually, his family decides it will be safer to smuggle him inside. He makes ’s and is transported to , but he’s rounded up and shipped to for medical experimentation. There, however, he gets a tattoo (meaning he isn’t marked for immediate extermination), and he survives the Holocaust.