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Rediscovering the Novelist Who Foretold the Holocaust
(Ha'aretz) Avner Shapira - Novelist Ulrich A. Boschwitz has become the subject of heightened interest due to the rediscovery of his two novels - some 80 years after they were written and 75 years after Boschwitz died at 27 during World War II. Der Reisende (The Traveler), Boschwitz's second novel, was written soon after Kristallnacht in November 1938 and describes the travails of a Berlin Jew, the businessman Otto Silbermann, who has fled his home, attempting to escape his homeland. German publisher Peter Graf says the belated discovery of the novel is like finding a message in a bottle 80 years later. "What makes it so special is the fact that Boschwitz wrote it in this form after the pogrom in 1938 - he feverishly composed it over the course of one month....What he describes stands at the beginning of a cruel process. It's the beginning of physical violence, of systematic persecution, but it's also the moment when the dehumanization of German society takes shape, where barbarism begins." Boschwitz was in London at the outbreak of the war in 1939 and was arrested, as were most Germans who had fled to Britain, even if they were Jewish or opponents of the Nazi regime. In 1940, Boschwitz was sent to a prison camp in Australia for two years. When the refugees were released in 1942, he requested to return to Europe and was due to join British military intelligence. He set sail for England aboard the passenger ship Abosso. On Oct. 29, 1942, the ship was torpedoed by a German submarine and 362 passengers drowned including Boschwitz.