The 1940s. Leon and his sons work on the Vistula River as sandblasters. One day the men fish a woman and her small daughter out of the river. It turns out that they are Jewish women who escaped from Warsaw, where they could not continue hiding. Leon undertakes a heroic struggle for their survival. He gives the women shelter in his home, risking the lives of his own family.

Roman Cudakowski, for his friends Cudak, plays in a band at weddings and city parties. During the occupation, the musician did not do well. Entrances to the premises for Germans are an opportunity to earn money. However, they cannot imagine themselves orchestras without a violinist. Cudak takes the gifted Szymon Akerman out of the ghetto to concerts, with whom he did not agree before the war. In the new reality, they both need each other: Cudak can earn money by playing with Akerman, has a chance to survive. One day, Roman decides to permanently take the violinist and his family from the ghetto and hide them, risking his life, in his home.

A village in Mazowsze, 1943. Two teenage boys, Janek and Staszek, find two young Jews hiding on a farm. They soon realize that the boys, Abram and Chaim, are their age and are the sons of a respected pharmacist who lived in a nearby town before the war. They were the only survivors of the anti-Jewish pogrom led by the Germans in the nearby forest. In spite of the deadly threat, Janek and Staszek decide to hide the boys and keep it a secret.