After learning that his brother Vazgen had died in his homeland during the Second World War, Gurgen Aramyan, who had been sent to an American orphanage during the bloody genocide of the Armenian people and remained in America, decided to travel to the Soviet Union in search of his children, Varazdat and Mariam. In the early days of the city's occupation, Vazgen joined the partisans. His wife was shot and killed by a German patrol. Varazdat and Mariam were left alone. They went to visit their neighbor, Uncle Stepan, who had recently escaped from a Soviet prison and was now afraid of both his own people and strangers.