In London’s Jewish East End during the Bltizkrieg, The Jewish Blitzstein family’s mother owns a pickled herring stall that adjoins the cockney Locke family’s father’s fruit stall. The two are at odds. But the Bltizstein’s son falls in love with the Locke’s daughter (who is blinded during an air raid). Harry Blitzstein deserts the army. And Mrs. Blitzstein is nearly killed in an air raid.