How he found himself stepping up when he was told to step down, down when he was told to step up; how he passed through a long box against a cold sponge splatterdashed in his face; how he opened his astonished eyes to see the knife of the guillotine descending on his innocent neck; how he was tossed up and down in the cruel blanket, until brains and bowels were both discombobulated, and he felt more than ever like a cat in a strange garret.

Switzerland, for example, had a long-standing nonvisa agreement with Germany, but in the summer of 1938, alarmed by the prospect of a Jewish deluge, they demanded some form of travel identification.

He writes prose with a conversational tone suited for a bus driver talking with a lone passenger on an hourslong excursion.

[…] what a wretched, and disconsolate hermitage is that house, which is not visited by thee, and what a waive and stray is that man, that hath not thy marks upon him?