Sophie is the survivor of Nazi concentration camps who has found a reason to live in Nathan a sparkling if unsteady American Jew obsessed with the Holocaust. They befriend Stengo the movies narrator a young American writer new to New York City. But the happiness of Sophie and Nathan is endangered by her ghosts and his obsessions.

When Jewish songstress Fania Fénelon is plucked from the stage and sent to Auschwitz, she and other musicians find themselves assigned to a terrible task – using their talents to soothe fellow prisoners who are sentenced to die in the gas chambers.