Freddy Wolff luckily has at last reached America . With a quaker document in hi pocket, he arrives in New York on one of the rickety refugee boats. Through their common passage across the ocean the refugees have become attached to each other. Freddy, too, seeks help and protection are indispensable for him.: his attempts at finding a place to live and a job turn out unsuccessful. Then, our hero is offered a job by a former viennese poet called Treumann, who is running a delicatessen in New York. His elderly daughter Lissa falls in love with Freddy. The young man matures through the hopelessness of their relationship. He takes the first independent decision of his life: he volunteers for the U.S. Army. He will thus go back to Europe as member of a propaganda unit.