In 1955 Monika, an acclaimed Jew pianist from Berlin who had survived imprisonment in a concentration camp, is called by the police to identify a former Nazi officer whose quarters she was appointed to wash as a child. Monika doesn't want to reveal the secrets of her past and the absolutely unusual relationship between her and the war criminal, due to the fact that he loved piano music and she could play. The story of the pianist slowly emerges through a series of flashbacks, from her childhood scarred by her father's abuses, to the lager and then to her success, until it reaches an unexpected and moving conclusion.