Refugee by Alan Gratz

Refugee tells the stories of three refugees from different countries and different time periods in alternating narratives.

Josef Landau 1938

Twelve-year-old Josef Landau, a Jewish boy living in Berlin in 1938, is awoken one night to the sounds of Nazi Brownshirts trashing his family's apartment and taking away his father, Aaron. Josef's father was forbidden to practice law because he is Jewish and he is hauled away for breaking the Civil Service Restoration Act of 1933. Later Josef learns that his family was not the only one who was attacked. In what has become known as Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, many other Jewish families and businesses were destroyed.Six months after he'd been arrested, Josef's father was released from a concentration camp called Dachau on the condition that he leave the country within fourteen days.

Josef, his younger sister Ruthie and his mother travel from Lehrter Bahnhof, Berlin's main railway station to Hamburg Central Railway Station. It is May, 1939 and Josef's family is to meet their father in Hamburg, board a ship that will take them to Cuba, the only country still willing to admit Jewish refugees. They ultimately hope to travel from Cuba to the United States.

In Hamburg, their rendezvous with Josef's father is frightening, as he is gaunt, and paranoid. He is determined they board the ship, the MS St. Louis immediately rushing up the ramp and past the soldier taking tickets. While Josef and Ruthie go on deck, the parents are left alone in the cabin. 

Their journey on the MS St.Louis will not be what they expect. Despite the happy mood of the refugees on the ship, Josef's father insists it is all a trap and that they will end up back in Germany. As his paranoia increases, Josef begins to wonder if their voyage will it offer them what they were hoping for, life in a new country, safe from the Nazis.

Isabel Fernandez 1994

Eleven-year-old Isabel Fernandez lives just outside of Havana in Cuba, in 1994. Isabel is hungry and poor, like everyone else in Cuba. With the fall of communism in 1989, the Soviet Union dissolving meant that Russia was no longer buying Cuba's sugar for eleven times the price and in exchange sending Cuba food, gasoline and medicine. With no one to buy the sugar cane, farms failed, refineries closed and people were out of work. Domestic animals were eaten to stave off hunger, even the animals in the Havana Zoo. Isabel's friend and neighbour, Ivan Castillo tells her his father is building a doghouse, but she knows they are making a boat to sail to the United States. If they are caught, they will be thrown into jail, like Isabel's father, Geraldo was when his second attempt to flee to the United States failed.

However, things turn very desperate for Isabel's father when a riot breaks out on the Malecon, a broad street in Havana. Isabel is on the street, preparing to play her trumpet. Busking is a way for her to earn a bit of money to help out her family. But when a riot breaks out over the food shortage, Isabel finds her father and grandfather in the middle of it. After her father tosses a bottle at the police line, he is singled out and beaten by a policeman. Isabel tries to intervene and is almost attacked herself, but she and her father are saved by Ivan's brother, Luis who is a new policeman. However, his attacker threatens to hunt him down and have him arrested. Isabel knows her father must now flee Cuba.

Back at home, while Isabel's mother is tending to her father's wounds, Fidel Castro comes on television and after a long rant, tells Cubans that those who want to leave the country may do so. Isabel's father is determined to leave but her grandfather, Lito is against the idea. He insists that Geraldo just needs to lay low for a while. However, Isabel comes up with the idea that they should all leave, even though her mother is due to give birth in a week's time. 

Isabel approaches her neighbour, Mr.Rudi Castillo who is working on his boat. Mr. Castillo refuses to include her family, telling Isabel he has no gasoline, so she sells her trumpet to a local fisherman in exchange for gasoline. When Isabel and her family along with the Castillos arrive at the beach carrying the boat, they are shocked to see hundreds of people doing the same. As they are launching their boat, Luis Castillo and his girlfriend Amara join them. Because the police are not allowed to leave, they are pursued by fellow officers and gunshots fired, but the boat gets away safely. 

Isabel and her family along with the Castillos immediately experience problems. The boat motor dies, and then they are swamped by a near-miss with a tanker which almost costs Mr. Castillo his life. But the dangers are not over yet, and by the time their journey is over, their chance at a better life will come at great cost.

Mahmoud 2015

Twelve-year-old Mahmoud lives in Aleppo, Syria with his mother, Fatima, his father Youssef, his baby sister Hana, and his ten-year-old brother Waleed. Aleppo had been a thriving, modern city in Syria until the coming of the Arab Spring in 2011. Protesting against President Bashar al-Assad had led to Assad attacking his own people. Now in 2015, war is all that Mahmoud and his family know. 

As they are finishing their afternoon prayer, a missile destroys the building housing Mahmoud's family. They manage to escape their apartment before the entire building collapses. Mahmoud's father, Youssef, who was an engineer with a mobile phone company, arrives home and  immediately tells them they are leaving Aleppo at once for Turkey. In Turkey, they will sell their car and travel north to Germany which is accepting refugees.

An hour out of Aleppa, Mahmoud's father is forced to stop by armed soldiers and give them a ride to the highway. However, before they reach the highway their car is attacked and Mahmoud and his family barely escape. As they flee in terror from the gun battle, they leave behind everything they own except their phones and chargers. After a long walk Mahmound's family arrive at the Turkish border along with thousands of other refugees. At the border near the city of Kilis,  they show their papers, and are admitted to the country. Almost immediately, Mahmoud's father manages to make arrangements with a smuggler to take them by boat from Ismir to Greece. But after a two day ride across Turkey in cars and buses, they arrive at Ismir only to be told that the boat will be ready the next day. 

After days of waiting, their boat is finally ready to take them across the Mediterranean Sea to Greece. Crammed into a black inflatable rubber dinghy with an outboard motor, the crossing turns into a terrifying disaster that almost sees the family drown. Mahmoud makes a split-second decision to save his baby sister Hana. Their long journey to a better life will come with much sacrifice but with hope too.

Discussion

Refugee follows three families as they flee their home countries for the safety of another land. For each family the reason is different; for Josef, a German Jew, it is persecution by the Nazi government, for Mahoud it is war that makes life impossible, and for Isabel it is poverty and the communist government of Cuba. 

Gratz seamlessly weaves together the three narratives, while drawing his readers into each separate story with exciting chapter endings.  Despite the expansive time frame stretching from 1939 to 2015, Gratz, through the stories in Refugee, demonstrates how all of us are interconnected through time, place and people. And in ways least expected.

These connections become apparent only near the end of the novel. For example, Josef's family along with the other Jewish passengers on the MS Louis are eagerly awaiting permission to disembark the ship and begin life in Cuba. Instead of being allowed to leave, Cuban policemen are sent on board. When Josef's father attempts to commit suicide by jumping overboard, he is saved by a young Cuban policeman, Mariano Padon. Years later, that same Cuban man, now Isabel's grandfather Lito, decides to jump out of their boat as a diversion to the U.S. Coast Guard, giving Isabel, her mother and father and the Castillo's the chance to get to the beach at Miami. 

Lito tells his granddaughter Isabel that he kept hoping things would change but did nothing. "I see it now Chabela. All  of it. The past, the present, the future. All my life, I kept waiting for things to get better. For the bright promise of manana. But a funny thing happened while I was waiting for the world to change, Chabela: It didn't. Because I didn't change it. I'm not going to make the same mistake twice." Lito makes the decision to sacrifice his chance to get to the US and to act as a diversion for the Coast Guard, giving Isabel and the people in their boat the chance to get to freedom.

Josef's family also becomes connected to Mahmoud's family in 2015 when Mahmoud and his family arrive as refugees in Germany. They are taken in by an elderly German couple, Saul and Ruthie Rosenberg. She tells Mahmoud and his parents that she was once a refugee too and how she lost her brother Josef and her mother, who both died in a concentration camp. Ruthie, now very old, understands what it is like to be refugee and she acts by bringing a Syrian family into her home.

The connection between each place in the story is interesting to consider. One country, dangerous in 1939, is now a place of refuge in 2015. Josef's family is seeking to flee Berlin, Germany, while Mahmoud's family is struggling years later to find safety in Berlin. Another place, Havana Cuba, potentially a place of safety in 1939, is a dangerous in 1994 to those not supportive of Fidel Castro.  Josef's family hopes to find safety in Havana, Cuba, while years later, Isabel's family is fleeing that very country, for the safety of the United States. These connections are not lost on Mahmoud. "Mahmoud knew from his history class back in Syria that Berlin had been all but destroyed by the end of World War II, reduced to a pile of rubble like Aleppo was now. Would it take another seventy years for Syria to return from the ashes the way German did?..."

There are many other connections to explore in Refugee. These include the similarities in the journeys of the refugees. For example, all of the refugees in the story travel at some point by boat. Their journey on water is fraught with danger and in each case, they experience the loss of someone dear to them. 

In Refugee, Gratz does a remarkable job portraying the humanity of the different refugees and in challenging readers through these portrayals, to consider how they are not so different, with hopes, dreams and the desire to live in freedom. The  novel demonstrates that the reasons people flee their homeland are similar regardless of era or place and that their experiences in their adopted countries are also similar. The reasons the Jews fled Germany in 1939 is similar to why Cubans left their island in 1994 and why Syrians fled in 2015. 

Refugee is another outstanding novel by Alan Gratz. The author has included maps at the back, showing the journey of each refugee and there is an extensive Author's Note providing the backstory to each refugee's narrative. Refugee provides an excellent opportunity for students in Grades 5 to 8 to explore the issue of refugees and the world's response to the crisis of displaced persons.

Book Details:

Refugee by Alan Gratz
New York: Scholastic Press     2017
338 pp.