Europe 1940s: Spanish fighter and photographer Mateo Baca is captured with seven thousand of his countrymen and sent to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. Here he is set to work processing images of the inmates for official documentationin all he preserves over twenty thousand images until liberation in 1945. In that time he and his friends are tasked to make a very special photo book made for the top Nazi figures. What starts as idyllic images of the camp and countryside mutates into horrifying records of the treatment of inmates. Just five books are made for presentation. Or so the officials think... Mateo manages to make a secret sixth book and with the help of a local woman Lena Lang it remains hidden until the end of the war. On liberation the book is smuggled out of Austria and into Yugoslavia where the photo album will play a crucial role in bringing war criminals to justice. Australia present day: When thirteen-year-old Hannah Campbell's Yugoslavian grandfather Nico Antonov arrives in Australia to visit his family one of the gifts he brings with him is an intriguing-looking parcel wrapped in calico cloth which Roza Hannah's mother quickly hides. Later Hannah sneaks off in search for the mysterious package. She is horrified to find in it a photobook full of ghastly historical photographs of a terrible place full of people suffering. One of the photos is of her grandfather Nico when young. His dark eyes are the same as hers; his suffering haunts her.
