Auschwitz 1944: In the concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, a Hungarian Sonderkommando secretly plans an uprising. The men have nothing to lose. They are forced by Oberscharführer Muhsfeldt and his henchmen to lead their own countrymen to their deaths. In exchange, they receive small privileges, living in rooms inside the crematoria and trading favors with valuables of the murdered. They are aware that their actions will earn them a reprieve of a few months at best. After that, they too will be killed. Full of contempt and self-hatred, they want only one thing: to stop the Nazis' bestial extermination machinery of which they have become a part - even if only for a short time. They join forces with female camp inmates who are forced to work in the munitions factory near Birkenau and who manage to secretly supply members of the Sonderkommando with gunpowder.