Budapest 1944, an occupied city: A day in the life of George Tabori's mother. She is arrested by the Hungarian secret police on the way to her sister and is brought to the West Station where around four thousand Jews have been rounded up to be deported to Auschwitz. Those deported are transported in cattle trucks to the "Gate of Death", a little border town where they are offloaded until they can be brought in another train to the death camp. The people are herded together in a courtjard and wait for the train from Germany. The mother is one of those waiting. She suddenly overcomes her inbred obedience and risks trying to break out of the seemingly inexorable transport to destruction. Through a mixture of courage, cunning and sudden insubordination, she manages to return to Budapest.