At the turn of the century, Lodz, Poland was a quick-paced manufacturing center for textiles, replete with cutthroat industrialists and unsafe working conditions. Three young friends, a Pole, a Jew and a German, pool their money together to build a factory. The movie follows their ruthless pursuit of fortune.

Pressured by his superiors to disgrace public intellectual Warczewski, a professor and respected writer whom they believe to be a "camouflaged Zionist," rough security-services colonel Rozek enlists his sexy but naive girlfriend, Kamila, to insinuate herself into the distinguished older man's life and report on his every move. Not particularly interested in serving communism but eager to please her domineering lover, Kamila accepts the mission, reporting under the code name "Little Rose." As quick scenes contrast Kamila's crude pleasures with Rozek and her more refined experiences with Warczewski, it becomes clear that the more time the unschooled young woman spends with the professor, the more she comes to have true feelings for him.