The story is set in England across three decades and focuses on a country cottage bought by two Jewish families of refugees, the Blacks and the Mosenthals. The title refers to the Jewish families that left Germany in the 30s and escaped the death camps.

In 1968 they decide to sell the property and the buyer is Lisa Pendry, a German woman who has lived in England most of her life. She is the daughter of a German property owner who made a lot of money buying and selling properties that Jewish families left behind after fleeing Germany. Leo Black stipulates that a condition for him to agree to the sale is that she apologize about the holocaust. Even if she initially refuses, Leo Black eventually agrees to the sale and they develop a relationship.

This scene is set thirty years later. Leo Black has just died and Lisa Pendry visits Leo Black's family, who have never met her before. In a heart felt speech, she narrates the story of her dad, how as a real estate developer, he got rich off Jewish who were forced to sell. She tells them how she has been hiding her sense of shame for a long time. After telling them how she bought the cottage thirty years before, she decides to give the property back to them since, after all, she had bought it with her father's inheritance...