A young Hungarian press illustrator and an even younger French publisher's daughter live together in Paris for four years, in a loving but crisis-ridden relationship without a marriage certificate. Only after bitter experiences does true love set in, leading the couple to the registry office after all.

A young teacher has to declare that she is unmarried in order to obtain a teaching license in the small town where her husband works as a teacher at the local grammar school.

Heidelberg teenagers make jazz music.

In war-torn Galicia, devout Jew Mendel Singer’s family faces hardship: his eldest sons are conscripted - one flees to Austria, then America - while their frail newborn Menuchim is deemed unfit to emigrate. Torn between love and survival, Mendel must choose who goes to the New World.