A family of 6 run away from their home in East Berlin in the dead of night. Emilia and Oskar fear for their children's safety when they start to punish children for not following the communist way that the East now practices. Clarissa "Clara" the now only surviving member of the stein family, tells the story of the fear, the laughter shared, and fight to be free from the jagged chains of the Soviet Union and their communist ways.