The story of Anna Mendel and Ingrid Brecht, Jewish and Protestant girls who were best friends until Anna joined the resistance and Ingrid became a guard at Ravensbrück and Auschwitz . Years later in 2006 after fifty years of being an American rabbi's wife, Ingrid reaches out to Dr.Anna Mendel for help during her deportation hearing, stirring up feelings of anger, betrayal and revealing the surprising reason why Anna was released from Auschwitz in 1945.Can Ingrid Levy ever escape her past as Lagerfuhrerin Brecht or ever do enough good to earn peace in this life? The answer blooms in the Berlin Tiergarten, the Garden of the Beasts, during a raging thunderstorm.
