What we don't know about the narrator in Seghers's Transit

It strikes me how little we know - and this must be intentional - about the narrator of Anna Seghers's 1951 novel, Transit. He's 27 and of German nationality. He tells us he escaped from a "concentration camp" in Germany in 1937: I didn't know there were such camps at that time, and we are given no clue as to why he was interred. Then - as the novel begins - he escapes from another camp, this time in France, not sure who was holding him there or why. Then he travels through France, just ahead of the German occupying army, so I think this is 1941?, heading to Marseille, where the rest of the novel takes place. In most novels about the Occupation the main characters are either Jewish refugees in France or members of the Resistance. We get no sense, however, of the Transit narrator's history or political views. So this is confusing, and I think deliberately so, as the narrator is meant only in part to be a figure in a historical narrative but also, as noted in previous posts, as a figure in an existential narrative: The many characters seeking exit visas, struggling to evade or avoid their doom, represent in a symbolic manner all people struggling for independence, freedom, and identity in a world made up of bureaucrats, fascists, and despots. The mood (or mode) of this novel could apply just as well to contemporary refugees from the Mideast or Africa, migrants from Latin America, or even - by a stretch - to all of us trying to avoid disaster and find a better life. The narrator is in this sense an "everyman" more than an individual. We don't even know his name.