In the confusion of post-war Germany, a mother is searching desperately for her daughter. It is the summer of 1946, the country is in ruins, and at millions of people have been left refugees. At the crowded station in Gleiwitz/Gliwice, Rosemarie Herrmann is desperately trying to get on a train for West Germany with her family. In the confusion her 10-year-old daughter Marie becomes separated from Rosemary and is left behind. The desperate Rosemarie ends up in Swabia along with her father, her sister and her sister’s little boy. Rosemary does everything she can to find her daughter again, plaguing the local displaced persons’ office, but in vain. Harald Bergmann, who works in this office, is so moved by Rosemary's fate that he offers her a job there. Rosemary seizes the opportunity to search for her daughter even more intensely. Meanwhile, Marie has ended up in a children's home on the Baltic coast. And here the girl is in such despair that it seems she just can't go on...