Slovakia, on the eve of the outbreak of World War II. The family of the young Jewish Martin Friedmann gathers to celebrate his bar mitzvah and make a solemn promise that they will all meet again a year later around the same table; but the storms of war and anti-Semitic fanaticism will lead each of them down very different paths.

Ten short unrelated stories that move chronologically through Slovakia's twentieth-century history as seen from the perspective of life in small towns and villages.