Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, Prophet

 I recently read The Passenger, a book written immediately after Kristallnacht in 1938 by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz. Drafted in only a few weeks, the book shows the terrible pressures on Jews as the Nazis racheted up their repression in the 1930s. Boschwitz managed to reach England, where he was deported to Australia as an enemy alien. In 1942 the ship returning him and 361 other passengers to England was torpedoed by a German submarine in the Atlantic. They all died. Boschwitz was 27 years old.

The book rings with passages that read like prophecy about the fate of the Jews, and also their tormentors. Boschwitz's gift allowed him to penetrate the near and far futures with unsettling accuracy. The main character, Otto Silbermann, is reduced to riding German trains as he frantically tries to recover money from his business, leave the country and avoid returning to his ransacked home. 

Boschwitz writes about what he imagines as the end result:

They'll slowly undress us first and then kill us, so our clothes won't get bloody and our banknotes won't get damaged. These days murder is performed economically.

In another passage, Boschwitz uncannily foresees the fate in store for many Germans:

Silbermann resumed his pacing. When he was twenty meters away from the SS man he again turned in his direction Am I really more anxious than other people? he asked himself. How would an SS man feel if he were forced to move about inside a Bolshevik state. And what if he had some additional marking, some feature that made him stick out like poor Fritz Stein?

These thoughts allowed him to feel his fear was justified. It was also comforting to imagine his enemies encountering their own day of dread, and Silbermann, who had always viewed the party of expropriation with disapproval and disgust, now found himself almost sympathizing with it, as his possible avenger. The idea was tremendously satisfying, and he clung to it for some time.

From a safe distance, Silbermann darted a glance at the unsuspecting man in uniform, as though to say: just wait, this is a long way from being over.

The Passenger is a short read with sharply drawn episodes. With this revised edition out, I can only mourn the loss of this great talent. Still, his book will live forever as a testament to a hinge point in history.