Twelve-year-old Edmund Kohler lives in devastated, Allied-occupied Berlin with his ailing, bedridden father and his adult siblings, Eva and Karl-Heinz. Eva manages to obtain cigarettes by going out with soldiers of the Allied forces, but she resists her friends' advice to prostitute herself. Karl-Heinz is the older son who fought in the war and is a burden to the struggling family, refusing to register with the police and get a ration card because he is afraid of what would happen if they found out he fought to the bitter end. The Kohlers and others have been assigned to the apartment home of the Rademachers by the housing authority, much to Mr. Rademacher's irritation. Edmund does what he can for his family.