In 1946, a child is born in the northwest of Germany. The father is Polish, a soldier in the Polish occupying army operating in the British zone of occupation, while the mother is German. The love fails, the soldier returns to Poland, and the child, a son, grows up without a father. It is not until many years later that there is contact again. And many years after that, Kolja Mensing, the grandson, embarks on a quest for traces in Germany and Poland. He discovers that family stories are never as clear-cut as they are told, and that war and occupation still shape his generation. Seventy years after the end of World War II, "The Legends of the Fathers" also sheds light on the historical circumstances of the Polish occupation zone that existed between 1945 and 1948 in the northern Emsland and around Oldenburg and Leer, about which little is known today. The book.