Due to complicity in a robbery raid the young Ursula comes to a detention center, in which the education is hard since she is considered a serious offender. In a joint outbreak, she gains the respect of the other girls.

As the end of the Second World War approaches and the Soviet Red Army is advancing, a group of concentration camp inmates is helped to escape by a Polish doctor. They hide in a wood where they meet other fugitives, who have been there for months, constantly in fear of being discovered. Out of fear of the German army patrols, they do not dare to leave the forest, even as the food supplies run low.