“What’s going on here?” he asked.

“I don’t want to be with a Jew…”

“What you want or don’t want doesn’t matter here…”

The prisoner was silent. After the guard left, Schwarz started shouting again: “Jews out! Jews out!”

Silbermann lay back down and stopped his ears with his thumbs. “I’m going to leave soon!” he said loudly.

“What are you going to do?” asked Schwarz, stepping closer. “What are you going to do?”

“Why are they making such a racket?” Silbermann asked quietly.

“Idiots, all of them are idiots,” Schwarz explained. “But I’m the one they want to sterilize!”

Silbermann stood up. “I don’t want to stay here,” he said. “I want to leave!… There’s a train to Aachen at seven … and at eight ten there’s a train to Nürnberg … and at nine twenty there’s one to Hamburg … and one to Dresden at ten … There are so many trains … so many trains and trains … I want to get away from here!”

“I see what you’re up to,” said Schwarz, convinced. “Come on and let’s shout together: Jews out…”

AFTERWORD TO THE GERMAN EDITION

Peter Graf

On October 29, 1942, Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz was approximately seven hundred nautical miles northwest of the Azores aboard the MV Abosso, when the German submarine U-575 torpedoed the passenger ship that was being used as a troopship by the British government. The unescorted vessel sank at 11 PM Central European Time. Ulrich Boschwitz was just twenty-seven years old when his life—along with the lives of 361 other passengers—was extinguished. He was carrying his latest manuscript.

Several weeks earlier, he had sent what would be his last letter to his mother, Martha Wolgast Boschwitz, in which he spelled out what should be done with his published and unpublished manuscripts in the event of his death, including his novel The Passenger, which had come out in England in 1939 and in America the following year—only to quickly disappear. In this letter dated August 10, 1942, Ulrich Boschwitz informed his mother that he had thoroughly revised the book, and that she should expect to receive the first 109 pages of the corrected manuscript from a fellow former prisoner who was on his way to England. The remaining revisions were still pending.

The author advised his mother to engage someone with literary experience to incorporate the revisions, as he was convinced that the changes would greatly improve the book, and thereby increase its chances of being published in a Germany that would hopefully soon be liberated. Writing in English, he closed his notes with the words: “I really believe there is something in the book, which may make it a success.” Evidently Martha Wolgast Boschwitz never received her son’s revisions: in any case they are not included in the fragmentary “Ulrich Boschwitz Collection” currently housed in the Leo Baeck Institute in New York. Nor does his niece and closest relative, Reuella Shachaf, know anything about their whereabouts.