It is 1939. Flamboyant Czech diplomat Jan Masaryk has fled to America to escape his recent past. Germany has invaded Czechoslovakia and Masaryk is now a man with no nation. In America he tries to forget the personal and political betrayal he and his country have suffered but these events shadow his every step. As the Czechoslovak ambassador in London, Masaryk failed to win the support of the British and could not avert the ruination of his country. With the help of Dr. Stein, an emigre German psychiatrist, and the beautiful writer Marcia Davenport, Masaryk tries to overcome his demons and re-live the dramatic events leading to the outbreak of the second world war.
80-year-old Ali Ungar comes across a book by a former SS officer describing his wartime activities in Slovakia. He realises his parents were executed by him. He sets out to take revenge but finds instead his 70-year-old son, Georg, a retired teacher. Georg, who had avoided his father all his life, decides to find out more about him and offers Ali to be his interpreter. The two old men, in everything opposite, embark on a bittersweet journey to meet surviving witnesses of the wartime tragedy. They discover a country eager to forget its past. They realise their memories are fragments mixed with their imagination and interpretation. They connect in silence and manage to discover their own identity.
Liesel Landauer and her friend Hana are linked by a lifelong relationship and an exceptional house built by the architect Von Abt for Liesel and her husband Viktor in Czechoslovakia in the early 1930s.