Winterkind tells a tragic story of the Russian Yelena, who after seven years of captivity learns that her son Boris, born in the camp, has been adopted by a German couple.

After 50 years, Marek remembers his dangerous adventure as a five-year-old, when he and his friend Itzek left a Polish transit camp one night in 1942 – a few days before their evacuation to Auschwitz – to go get the toys they forgot at the ghetto. Based on Becker's personal memories and his 1980 short story "The Wall."