Alternating comedy and drama this portrait of different families on three floors in an Amsterdam building where the stairs symbolizes the suffering of known urban living alongside each other. Upstairs live two students, including the failed and unemployed singer Karin with Harrie and Wouter down with his demented mother.

This film is about the Jewish girl Sara and the ruin of her family during World War II. Her parents have to live in the Jewish ghetto in Amsterdam, but later they are arrested and deported. Sara decides to flee with her brother and his girlfriend to Palestine. Based on the book by Marga Minco.