Today I have ordered up the Passenger from Chorlton Bookshop.
It was written by Alexander Boschwitz, in the weeks after Kristallnacht.*
“It tells the story of a Jewish businessman called Otto van Silbermann, who hears a knock at his door from Nazi Storm Troopers and quickly realises he must flee.
Alexander Boschwitz himself had left Germany three years earlier after anti-Semitic laws were enacted.
His book was published in the US and UK in 1939 and 40 respectively, but made little impact and soon went out of print."**
Alexander Boschwitz and his mother emigrated to Norway, later living in France, Belgium and Luxembourg before coming to Britain just before the outbreak of the Second World War.
They were arrested as enemy aliens and Alexander was sent to Australia, where he spent two years in an internment camp.
In 1942, Boschwitz was allowed to leave the camp, but the ship taking him back to England was torpedoed by German U-boats.
Picture; book cover, The Passenger; Alexander Boschwitz, 1939
* Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi SA and civilians throughout Nazi Germany on November 9 &10th 1938 during which the German authorities did nothing to intervene.
**The Passenger; Lost German novel makes UK bestseller list 83 years on, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-57141856
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