Malamud emerged as a talented artist, depicting the life of the Jewish poor in New York. His creative works are
appreciated for his allegory and mastery in the art of storytelling. Malamud was the son of Jewish grocers and he
grew up in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. Some argue that this was the reason that he wrote
stories "set in small, prisonlike stores of various kinds"
Malamud explores the social realism and ethnic identity in most of his short stories – ‘The Jew Bird,’ ‘Black is my
Favorite Color’, ‘The German Refugee’. Malamud's fictional works also include themes of compassion, redemption,
new life, the potential of meaningful suffering and self-sacrifice, all of which can be found in “The German Refugee”
"The German Refugee" concludes Bernard Malamud's second collection of short stories, Idiots First (1963). The
setting is New York City in the summer of 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II.