1930s, Dobrudja. The shepherds Vasil, Peter and Ago work in the farm of Zachariah and Sevastitsa. Vasil is the manager of the sheepfold. In his house lives the young and beautiful Vasilena, for whom everyone sighs.

There were times when stealing girls in these lands has been a worthy vocation, was a habit and a sort of custom in Bulgaria. Only the strongest and most experienced men took the profession up. A young and brave Bulgarian highlander was given the job to bring, no matter how, a certain beautiful girl to be married to somebody.

The end of World War II. The Bulgarian army is fighting the German one. Private Peycho Peychev known as Peychina is also at the frontier - a sensitive and timid person forced to witness the horrors of the war. His commanding officer keeps saying that at the end of a war the world is swept by a 'surge of tenderness'. After a serious injury, Peychina goes back to his birth place. The new ruling powers in the village try to win him over to their side but what he is really good at is holding the chisel, not the gun. He carves an image of Elena, a woman that he falls in love with. Yet, the surge of tenderness in the world seems to be canceled. Peychina comes to be responsible for the death of an anarchist and helps capture his commanding officer, who fights against the new rule. When the mayor hands him a gun again, he refuses to take it.

Silent film with English inter-titles on the German Communist leader Ernst Thälmann and the campaign to release him from Buchenwald concentration camp.