On the Run From the Nazis, Taking Train After Train
Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, author of “The Passenger.”Credit...via Leo Baeck Institute New York
By Michael Hofmann
THE PASSENGER
Translated by Philip Boehm
Sometimes an author’s story and the story of the author’s fate jump up to greet us simultaneously, and we don’t know which has more power to move us. Especially when both, in a sense, are outlines — rushed, unfinished or barely finished sketches.
Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz, a young writer and Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, drowned in 1942 when the ocean liner MV Abosso was torpedoed by a German submarine in the North Atlantic. Along with the ship’s 362 passengers and crew members, the waters took the revised manuscript of “Der Reisende,” Boschwitz’s bold second novel, which had previously appeared in English as “The Man Who Took Trains” in Britain, and “The Fugitive” in the United States. On publication, it received middling reviews. Boschwitz kept working on it, writing to his mother: “I really believe there is something in the book that may make it a success.”