"in the past" makes the most sense here :)
Answer:
Parallelism
its balancing his speech, making what he says feel impactful
Moishe the Beadle, who is a foreign Jew, is expelled from Sighet (which is in Hungary) and sent to Poland. There, the Gestapo takes over his train and orders Jews to get off and board trucks. They are taken to woods near the Galician forest and told to get out of the trucks and dig deep trenches. Then the Gestapo soldiers order each person to approach the trenches and bear his or her neck, and each person is shot. Babies are tossed into the air and used for target practice. Moishe is able to escape because he was shot in the leg and believed to be dead.
Moishe returns to Sighet to warn the community of the fate that awaits them so that they can prepare. He says, "I wanted to return to Sighet to describe to you my death so that you might ready yourselves while there is still time" (page 7). However, no one in Sighet believes him, and they think he is insane. They do not heed his warning.
Enotes.com
