Der Reisende

It's all locker room talk until...
Your friends will stick by you until...
You're almost a proper German until...
Present company obviously excepted until...
That lot are just harmless thugs nobody takes seriously until...
Your money's good until...
Your vote counts until...
You're free to travel anywhere you want until...
Other countries are happy to welcome you until...
You can be an individual on your own merits until...
Upstanding citizens will refuse to be silent until...
The laws still apply to you until...
Your service to your country counts until...
Concentration camps are just prisons until...

Written in a few weeks after Kristallnacht. Otto Silbermann dodges the SA as they bust down his door and gets out of Berlin with a briefcase full of money after selling his company for scrap. Spends days travelling back and forth on the train, trying to figure out where he can go when suddenly everything goes from until to NOW. Feverish, panicked, clear-eyed, ridiculously modern in its feel. I'm told only commies who'd call anyone a Nazi just because they speak their mind about The Others would draw comparisons between 1930s Germany and today's political climate, so just to be clear, it's obviously, completely irrelevant to anything.

Until it's not.