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.

Tessel is determined to give her boyfriend the day of his life by marrying him. But the closer the big moment gets, the more Tessel starts to doubt everything: her dress, her boyfriend, her ex and most of all herself. In the end only one thing is clear: this will be a day to remember.

Israel, 1956: Jewish teacher Rachel Stein rather unexpectedly meets an old friend at the kibbutz. It brings back memories of her experiences in the Netherlands during the war, memories of betrayal. In September 1944, Rachel's hiding place is bombed by Allied troops; she makes contact with a resistance member and joins a group of Jews to be smuggled across the Biesbosch to the freed South Netherlands. Only Rachel escapes a massacre by patrol Germans, and is rescued by a resistance group under the leadership of Gerben Kuipers, whose son is captured trying to smuggle weapons. Kuipers asks Rachel to seduce SS-hauptsturmführer Ludwig Müntze, a mission that she will soon learn that the boat attack wasn't a coincidence.