1888: a luthier, Vedder, has to step aside when his home, opposite the recently completed Central Station in Amsterdam, must yield for the planned Victoria Hotel. His cousin Anijs, pharmacist in the Northern provinces of the Netherlands, has gotten into a fix after illegal medical practices, and is looking for a way out. For himself and his wife Martha, but also for a colony of poor peat cutters whom he promises a future in the United States. Committed - or is it pride? - the two of them think up a scheme from which they all will fully benefit. With tragic consequences.

Viegeltje looks like a girl but has wings instead of arms. Bird watcher Warre finds her under brushwood and takes her home. Warre and his wife Tine decide to keep Viegeltje and raise her like an ordinary girl. But Viegeltje isn't an ordinary girl and she flies away. She wants to go to the South with the other birds. It becomes a long and adventurous journey.

In Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, Walter Süskind is a member of the Dutch Jewish Council who rescues hundreds of children from the concentration camps.