Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Refugee, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Trauma and Coming of Age
Injustice and Cruelty vs. Empathy and Social Responsibility
Hope vs. Despair
Family, Displacement, and Culture
Invisibility and the Refugee Experience
Summary
Analysis
Josef, Ruthie, and Rachel board a train to Hamburg and sit in a compartment labeled J, for Jew. They are going to meet Aaron in Hamburg and then board the ship that will take them to Cuba. Since the Nazis took over six years ago, countless Jews have fled Germany, and many countries have stopped admitting Jewish refugees. Josef’s family hopes to live in Cuba until they can be admitted to the United States.
Rachel, Josef, and Ruthie don’t hesitate to uproot their lives in order to stay with Aaron, recognizing that family is more important than remaining tied to their culture. This is particularly true for the Landaus because Germany is so intent on both erasing Jewish culture and making sure that Jewish people do not feel as though they are Germans.
Themes
Ruthie was born the year Hitler was elected. She would be starting school this year, if Jews were still allowed to go to school. Josef thinks about his last time at school. His teacher, Herr Meier, called him to the front of the classroom and lowered a screen with faces of Jewish people so that the other kids could learn how to identify a Jewish person. Josef felt humiliated, being talked about as though he were “subhuman.”
Josef’s memory of this incident at school displays more of the widespread cruelty in Germany, even among those who aren’t a part of the Nazi regime—even the teachers and other students dehumanize Josef, singling him out and making him feel lesser than the non-Jewish German children. This enables the cruelty that Josef goes on to describe at the end of the chapter.
Themes
Josef decides to try to explore the train, slipping off the armband with the Star of David that he had to wear. He is able buy a newspaper from a concession stand without anyone realizing that he is a Jew, but he knows that if he were wearing his armband, the man running the stand would be calling the police. When Josef reaches in his pocket for more money in order to buy Ruthie a treat, however, his armband falls out of his pocket for everyone to see. Instantly, a boy from the Hitler Youth takes him by the arm.
The irony of the incident that Josef describes at school is that it is shown to be completely ludicrous on the train. Without the armband with the Star of David mark, none of the Germans on the train know that Josef is Jewish. Therefore, their attempt to demonstrate how Josef is lesser or strange because of his ethnicity as a Jewish person is completely disproven.
Themes
Josef recalls that when Herr Meier called him in front of the class, Josef’s best friend, Klaus, had winced to show how sorry he was about the incident. But that afternoon, when a group of Hitler Youth beat Josef up, Klaus joined them. Josef knows that wearing the uniform turns boys into “monsters.”
Gratz illustrates how the teacher’s abuse at school gives the children license to abuse Josef—even those who had called him a friend. Gratz implies that hatred is a learned behavior, and that instead it is necessary to learn empathy rather than to dehumanize others and brutalize them.
Themes
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