A two-part historical film covering the years of the First World War and the post-war period up to 1919 - until the signing of the peace treaty in Versailles near Paris. An attempt to show the great and complicated process of regaining an independent existence by a nation within its own state. The screen shows characters from history textbooks: Józef Piłsudski, Ignacy Paderewski, Roman Dmowski, Wojciech Korfanty as well as representatives of the world political scene, incl. David Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson, Georges Clemenceau, Vladimir Lenin and others.
1945. Soviet offensive is approaching Cracow. Local resistance cooperate despite political differences to save the city from destruction planned by Germans.
The young couple love each other. The boy is in constant work which will fit him, and in the end becomes a petty thief who cannot pay his debts anymore and decides to steal from homes where he pays scheduled visits to lonely housewifes. The girl works a nurse but is too sensitive in extreme cases. Running parallel to their story is a metaphor involving a castaway on a junkyard, who tries every means possible to get rid of the dog which becomes attached to him. In the end he attaches sticks of dynamite to the dog, but he breaks loose and the explosion wipes them both.
