The German Refugee

The German Refugee

Major Characters:

Martin Goldberg: The narrator. A twenty-year-old "poor," "skinny, life-hungry" student who supports himself giving English lessons to refugees from Hitler in the summer of 1939. His students are all "acomplished men" and Oskar is one of them. His other students are: "Karl Otto Alp, the former film star; Wolfgang Novak, once a brillian economist; Friedrich Wilhelm Wolff, who had taught medieval history at Heidelberg."

Oskar Gassner: A fifty-year-old refugee from Germany. He was an accomplished Berlin critic and journalist before the Nazis destroyed his career. He has just emigrated to the U.S. parting his gentile wife. He desparately needs to master English so that he can secure his new job in America, a lecutrer at the Institute of Public Studies. "He had at one time studied English...he managed to put together a fairly decent, if sometimes comical, English sentence." But "the thought of giving the lecture in English just about paralysed him."

Frau Gassner: Oskar's wife. She and Oskar "had met as students, lived together, and were married at twenty-three." She refused to come to U.S. with Oscar because she did not think he wished her to come. Oscar susspects that she is "a Jew hater" in her heart. Although "he had lived with her for almost twenty-seven years under difficult circumstances," he thinks that "[she] had been ambivalent about their Jewish friends and his relatives." Her mother is "always a violent anti-Semite."

Chronology of Events:

On a late June evening in 1939: Martin, sent by the college, visits Oskar at "his stuffy, hot, dark hotel room on West Tenth Street." Martin learns that Oscar has had two English tutors, who have given him up, and that he is the third. After the successful first lesson, they have a walk around Central Park Lake. Oscar buys him a bottle of beer.

After Oscar moves to a two-room apartment in a house on West 85th Street: they meet three times a week at four-thirty, work an hour and a half, and then they converse at the 72nd Street Automat. Oscar seems to be learning and his mood lightens. He cannot, however, write his lecture even in German.

By the seventeenth of July: they start working on the lecture. But Oscar cannot write. "When he gave up attempting to write the lecture, he stopped making progress in English....He had plunged into an involved melancholy." He expresses his hatred of the Nazis and says, "I feel certain that my wife, in her heart, was a Jew hater." Martin learns that Oscar had attempted suicide during his first week in America--at the end of May.

One afternoon: Martin finds Oscar's room empty. Fearing that Oscar might commit suicide, he searches for a gun and finds a letter from Oscar's wife in a drawer. Oscar has been in the public library. He still cannot overcome his block.

Mid-August: Things are going steadily worse both in Europe and for Oscar. Martin visits him every day, "as a friend, neglecting my other students and therefore my livelihood." Martin learns about Frau Gassner from Oscar. "One day, toward the end of August," Martin shows Oscar the notes of the lecture he has written for the refugee. Oscar does not like them and starts to write Martin a letter to say what he has missed. By doing so, Oscar practically finishes writing half the lecture. He calls Martin on the phone to report this:

        "I thank you," he said, "for much, alzo including your faith in me."

        "Thank God," I said, not telling him I had just about lost it.

During the first week in September: Oscar completes his lecture. Assisted by Friedrich Wilhelm Wolff, it is translated into English a week later. After working on his delivery for two weeks, Oscar gives the lecture successfully. "He had awakened from defeat....His blue eyes had returned to life."

"Two days later [from the lecture]": Oscar takes his life by turning on the gas stove in the kitchen. He leaves Martin all his possessions. Martin finds a recent airmail letter from Oscar's "anti-Semitic mother-in-law." After Oscar abandons her, Frau Gassner is "converted to Judaism by a vengeful rabbi." She is caught and sent to a small border town in Poland with the other Jews. She is shot in the head and dumped in a ditch with the other victims.