The antithesis to the common argument
The question about immigration is explored from the point of view of the Nazi Holocaust and the Jewish exodus from Europe. In Dr. Henry Selwyn's story, the reader sees a reality quite contrary to popular arguments against allowing immigration of political refugees. Such arguments often say that immigrants are coming to their country to compete with them for resources just because they like it better. However, Selwyn doesn't like his life as a refugee at all. The horror he endures and the loneliness of his life as an unwelcome alien in a new country lead him to suicide.
Self-betrayal
Paul Bereyter's story takes an ironic turn when he is allowed to live. Even though he is a quarter Jewish, the Nazi army allows him to escape his fate in the concentration camps if he will pick up a gun and fight for the Nazis. He accepts, not having another choice, and then by his self-betrayal, he bares witness to the treatment of the Nazis against the Jews. The horror of this is overwhelming and he too commits suicide rather than to participate whatsoever in such mistreatment.
The Holocaust as touchstone
During the time of the Nazi Holocaust, millions of Jews were brutally tortured and murdered in concentration camps across German-speaking Europe. This novel uses that historical event as a touchstone for addressing the complicated political question of immigration from nations with political instability. The question is complicated by the fact that the country to whom the refugees turn are often insulated by privilege from the horrors the refugees are fleeing. The Holocaust is used as a case study in showing that sometimes, emigration means life or death.
Uncle Adelwarth
This narrator's uncle is a Jewish refugee from Germany who finally arrives in the United States where he works as a butler for a wealthy Jewish family. This shows a wide spectrum of wealth and prosperity with the Emigrants at the very bottom. This portrait also symbolizes the luxury and privilege that defines American life. Before long, Adelwarth finds someone who respects him as a person, but that person dies, and Adelwarth spirals into insane depression.
Art and trauma
The artist Max Ferber shows that for him, survival has been a bitter pill to swallow. So intense and confusing are his negative feelings of survivor's guilt and loneliness in the wake of his parents deaths, that he spends his life painting to capture abstract emotions that are far beyond his ability to describe in language. Instead of suicide, Ferber picks art, symbolizing something sacred about the connection between suffering and art.
