It is 1945 in Zagreb, and everyone is settling into the new regime following the disturbances of the war. Matilda is a wealthy widow of a war hero and has an apartment so spacious that she is required to take a boarder. Fortunately for her, the handsome young Lt. Horvat, the communist housing officer, has taken a fancy to her and has assigned his fiancee to be Matilda's new roommate. Where Matilda is soft and rounded, Lilijana is hard, skinny, and given to revolutionary pronouncements rather than tender endearments. The lieutenant loves them both, though he naturally finds Matilda more attractive. His situation is simplified when Lilijana, though pregnant, is transferred to another post. However, his commander is horrified that he has a lover in addition to his fiancee and demands that he choose whether to continue his career or continue his affair.
When his family moves from their home in Berlin to a strange new house in Poland, young Bruno befriends Shmuel, a boy who lives on the other side of the fence where everyone seems to be wearing striped pajamas.
The invasion of a village in Belarus by German forces sends young Flyora into the forest to join the weary Resistance fighters, against his family's wishes.
Stella, grows up in Berlin during the rule of the Nazi regime. She dreams of a career as a jazz singer, despite all the repressive measures she is forced to go into hiding with her parents in 1944, her life turns into a culpable tragedy.
In a small town in Nazi-occupied Slovakia during World War II, decent but timid carpenter Tono is named "Aryan comptroller" of a button store owned by an old Jewish widow, Rozalie.
In WWII Western Germany, Private David Manning reluctantly leaves behind a mortally wounded fellow soldier and searches for survivors from his platoon, only to learn from commanding officer Captain Pritchett that they have all been killed in action.
A Vietnam vet with PTSD and his new wife are invited for their honeymoon aboard his war buddy's yacht along with a third war friend and their girlfriends.
Expecting the usual tedium that accompanies a summer in the Catskills with her family, 17-year-old Frances 'Baby' Houseman is surprised to find herself stepping into the shoes of a professional hoofer—and unexpectedly falling in love.