During World War II, a woman aboard a railroad car full of deportees slips French railway worker Julien a note with an address and a simple message: "I am alive, and I love you," and he decides to track down the intended recipients. When he finds the woman's Jewish family, he is inspired to do what he can to protect them from the Nazi atrocities.

Reading old letters, a young girl from Châteauroux, Carole, discovers that her father was an American soldier whose regiment was based in town in the 1950s. She will try by all means to find people who remember this period.