1825-1831年是肖邦人格的形成期，也是全欧洲社会动荡的时期：民族主义不断高涨，人们强烈呼吁社会变革。肖邦作为一名学习音乐的优秀学生，内心充满了对祖国波兰的革命情怀。他所举办的一系列音乐会得到贵族阶层的高度好评。

故事发生在二战时期波兰华沙一条普通的街道上，在这条街上居住着许多居民，他们大多都是生活在一起几十年的老邻居。每天大人们各忙各的，孩子们则闹成一团，对孩子们来说，这里就是他们的天堂。然而这一切伴随着二战战火的蔓延而一去不返……

A rare record of Jewish life in Poland before World War II, the film was produced as an international fundraiser for the Medem Sanatorium near Warsaw, a clinic sponsored by the General Union of Jewish Workers that provided care and an escape from urban poverty for some 10,000 children between 1926 and 1939. The film follows three children as they gradually overcome their emotional withdrawal and distrust and enter the communal life of the institution.

Freed Polish soldiers are trapped in a small town in Germany during the last days of World War II. After a doctor's daughter is raped by a concentration camp worker, the Poles allow her and her father to stay in the house that is their temporary quarters. While waiting to be repatriated, the war-weary group is forced to fight some German soldiers who invade the town. The war brings out conflicting emotions of the Poles who find themselves trapped in the house and once again under fire from the enemy.

In war-ravaged Warsaw, five juvenile delinquents are given probation for stealing, to rehabilitate themselves, but remain under the influence of their profiteer-boss.