Jascha and Lilka escape separately from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942. Reunited years later, they live in London where Jascha has become a celebrated writer, feted for his dark tales about his war adventures. One day, forty years after the war, Jascha receives a letter inviting him to give a reading in Warsaw. He tells Lilka that nothing remains of the city they knew; she is nostalgic for the city of her childhood. Traveling by train through a frozen December landscape, they return to the city of their past.