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I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941

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My review refers to the german original edition of the Klemperer diaries from 1933-1945. In the german edition, the diaries are not published in two parts. It must be hard for the english reader to stop 1941 and wait. Klemperer wrote more than 5000 typoscript pages of diary during the nazi period. The german original edition with many cutbacks has more than 1800 pages (1933-1945), the english translation about 500 (1933-1941), so I expect more cutbacks in the english version - most likely around Klemperers language studies about LTI-lingua tertii imperii, the language of the 3. Reich - more interesting for german native speakers. For the english reader, which had yet only read the diary until 1941 I will give the warning, that the 1942 diary is really the most depressing one.

The Klemperer diary is definitely the best book I ever read about the nazi-time. (second one: Hans Fallada, 1947: "Jeder stirbt für sich allein" (Everybody dies for himself), English title: ?)

As a German I grew up with an endless amount of information, literature, books, documentations, discussions and history school lessons about the 3. Reich, but the most refer only to long known facts and their problem is, that they are written with the look of the survivers, the next generation or the history view which sorts and interprets the facts with the knowledge of the ending. I believe, that nobody can understand the system, who has not read "first-hand" impressions. The Klemperer diary is, what I always was looking for: An uncommented inside view to the all day life in germany in that days and the evolution of the unthinkable. A first-hand information about the terrorism not in the concentration camps, but in "normal" life.

Klemperer shows on nearly every page of his book, how many germans didn't follow Hitler's antisemitic view. He noticed the meanings, conversations, wishes, anxiety of the german population and always wondered about the opinion of the majority - is it pro or contra Hitler? He noticed the endless list of restrictions for the jews - simple and little things, which are forgotten and pressed to the background by the horror of the concentration camps, but new for us today. He noticed, how people divide in heroes and opportunists. By reading about the nazi-time we always ask ourself "What would I have done?" Would I had helped the people who needed me despite of the danger of loosing my own life, or would I had taken care only for my own security.

It's hard to imagine, that someone can register, analyse und document all this on an unbelievable level of quantity and quality under the circumstances of starving, illness, pressure work und humiliation. He wrote not only a diary, he wrote high level literature - espessially his description "Zelle 89" about his 8-day prisonary on a level like "Schachnovelle" (Chess novell) from Arnold Zweig (highly recommended!). Around Victor Klemperer his (and the readers) friends are murdered or make suicide and he expects his own death every day but he wrote a real thriller like nobody else. We know, that he survived, but nearly everybody else, who was introduced to the reader didn't. A fiction thriller can not be a better page turner.

After reading this diaries I decided to buy also his memories from 1881-1918 and the diaries from 1918-1932 to read how life was during World War I and how the republic turned to dictatorship and his diaries from 1945-1959, to read why he decided to stay in East-Germany and join the communist party - in contrast to his liberal political opinions. Together all four books must be the best inside view to german history during these important periods.

The book is a memorial for all the nameless, who decided to be a hero (espessially Eva Klemperer) and for the six million, which would not have lost their life, if there had been more heroes. It brings us back a remembrance to at least a few of the six million precious human beings Europe lost forever and brings us back, that the nazis really killed a main part of the elite of european culture and society by killing the jews.

Buy it and read it.

The most disarming and appealing feature of this tome is its slow and ineluctable building of suspense and empathy as World War I veteran Klemperer steadily weaves the day to day details of his life in 1930s Germany into a portrait of a rogue state moving irresistably down the path to tyranny and terror. The reader is sucked into the vortex of what it is like to live under such circumstances, where an aging Jewish professor who has built a life of purpose and meaning based on scholarship, hard work, and the belief in the rationalism of the state begins to understand that it will all unravel around him. You begin to experience how difficult and incomprehensible it must be for him, and empathize and worry for his fate as the building storm clouds of violent fascism fill the skies of 1930s Germany. As the days and weeks pass into months and years under the growing tyranny of National Socialism, Klemperer, married to an Aryan woman, increasingly finds solace and relief from the growing insanity swirling around him by concentrating on his academic writing, which he continues against all odds. As he faces an arbitrary enforced early retirement from his professorial duties, he also begins to take more time to enjoy simple pleasures with his wife, Eva, as they revel in long nature walks, the perils and pleasures of driving a second-hand car, and in watching the cinema. His refusal to submit to the progressively more invective growth of lies, invectives, and accusations of the Nazi regime build into a quiet resolve to resist in the way he knows best, by maintaining an intelligent, insightful, and careful witness to the everyday horrors perpetrated with malice and cunning on the Jews as the scapegoat for all of Germany's post-WWI social and economic woes. One stands by as we watch Victor and Eva systematically stripped of everything of meaning to them; their house, car, telephone, typewriter, even their beloved cat. While he understands all too well the dangers for him and his family, he consistently resists the increasingly strident pleas from family members for him to emigrate primarily because he identifies himself first and foremost as a German, and he refuses to abandon the Fatherland to the beastial likes of Hitler and the Nazis. One's sense of horror is magnified by his careful attention to the day to day details of living in the regime, the difficulties in finding socks, or clothing, or a cobbler, or vegetables, coffee, tobacco (both he and Eva are smokers), dealing with increasingly restrictive curfews, the ordeal and shame associated with the enforced wearing of the yellow star of David, the progressive acts of enforced segregation from the general populace, the occasional experiences at degradation at the hands of a youthful crowd of Hitler Youth. Yet there is great humanity evidenced here, both within the Jewish community and without it. The pathos of ordinary people caught in the web of a totalitarian state is made quite clear; unlike other academics who recently have argued in belief of a generalized and universalized hate on the part of ordinary Germans leading to their willing complicity in the persecution of Jews, Klemperer offers almost daily testimony of the unending acts of kindness, generosity, and personal risks that everyday citizens take to help and assist Jews to survivie against the dictates of the totalitarian regime. Again and again he is given free food, extra provisions, someone looking deliberately the other way when they did so at personal risk. Klemperer seems to acknowledge that life in Nazi Germany was a hell for all of the citizens, Jew and non-Jew alike. Interestingly enough, at one point he mentions his personal willingness to forgive and forget towards most other Germans, but reserves enduring special scorn, animosity and bile for academics who became fellow-travelers of the regime to save their personal position and privilege. This is a book that should become required reading for college students in world history. I am looking forward to continuing exploring this rite of passage as I begin reading the second volume of the diaries.

As an Irishman who lived in Germany for three years and really enjoyed getting my teeth into their rich and juicy language, I found the story of Viktor Klemperer's struggle to stay afloat in the 1930's as a Jew very familiar. There are many places in this world where people feel as he did, at least while the humiliations and restrictions were still not life-threatening, and that is why many would find such a diary interesting. Women in the Third Reich, too, could have written about being fired from respectable positions and sent back to "kirche, kuche und kindern". What makes the story very authentic are his very stereotypical views of women, or "little people" (workers, etc.), and his own gravitation towards fellow Jews. This makes him much more real - fussy, getting older, losing his courage and endurance, dealing with his wife Eva's illness, driven mad by doing "housemaid's work" which Eva, unemployed, cannot seem to do. The stove needs coal, and it's always dirty. They have a summer cottage in Doelschen, and they are trying to do the work themselves, getting there by expensive taxi, with Eva driven bonkers by the neighbors there around them so much further progressed in their cottage building. HE is perpetually strapped to pay his bills, has to give up his life insurance policy, but carries on with the extreme expense of running a used car, delighting in using the new 7.5-km autobahn near Dresden, a road for the Fuhrer! They do not give up the cottage or the car when he is suspended from the university. All the petty and not-so-petty sums which plague this older couple (toilet paper, for example, and cigarettes) are recounted in numerical detail. That is what makes the story so interesting, and so real. I do wonder that there are not more diaries kept, as the German people are extremely literary, introspective, with scrivener tendencies. In particular he is under threat as a Jew, regardless of renouncing it as a religion. But no matter if he had been an Aryan, his impatience with others, and the annoyances of life, come through almost daily. I compare him to my own much more stoical father, who wouldn't bother (after living through the Depression) to complain about such insignificant slights, at least in the beginning. Yet, and yet! It is in his extreme sensitivity to words, innuendoes, context, based on his being a Jew and outsider, that makes his observations so exact, nor does he hide his view that others are often beneath him. Like another reviewer here, I too wondered about his wife Eva, often ill, other times out there gardening for 8 hours, who'd been a professional violinist, and who does not seem to work or be involved in these money matters, much in contrast to most married people I've ever known. In big German cities at that time, most women were working, esp. in offices and factories. It was a very modern and bustling time. My suspicion is that Eva had a form of neurological disease, such as MS, which affects eyes, muscle strength, balance, and mental state. It comes and goes without warning, which could explain why she was so often "ill"; other times going gungho on the summer house. A real job may have been too much.He writes very well, very openly, and very honestly, so that any reader could find this interesting. As a male professor, he had status in old Germany; as a Jew, he began to suffer an untermensch status, as some of the servants and Arbeiters seemed to be in his estimation. He may not have been the nicest of men, yet his clarity and honesty is a graphic account of totalitarianism creeping up and choking its people, much as happened in Communist countries.

I was terrified by the world that Victor Klemperer brings to life in " I Will Bear Witness ". The diary is a day by day account of a slow descent into the bowels of Hell. In the beginning the reader is pulled into Klemperers mostly mundane day to day life. Klemperer was a well respected and much published professor of Romance Languages at the University of Dresden. As well he was a decorated veteran of World War I. Slowly, starting with Hitlers rise to power in 1933, his entire world is turned inside out. Day by day the situation becomes more strained. Year by year the situation becomes more dangerous. But the brave hearted Klemperers stay on in Germany because they are German and can imagine no other life. I was greatly moved by the scenes that were brought to life by Klemperer. The description of the first household search they were subjected to caused goose bumps to run up my spine. In addition, the narrative of his 8 day imprisonment ( cell 89 ) is in my opinion a classic that will belongs to the ages. His ability to to draw a picture and capture the mood of a situation was truly amazing. I cannot say enough about the courage of the Klemperers as they fought everyday to hold onto their dignity, pride and finally their lives. Thanks to the skill and courage of Professor Klemperer I now have, in some small way, an idea of what the day to day horror of Nazi Germany was like for the persecuted.

I devoured the roughly 1500 pages of Victor Klemperer's diary in the German original in four consecutive days and nights. What grips one is the question how Klemperer, an identifiable Jew, could have survived the Third Reich in the face of the horrendous persecution of the Jews which his detailed diary shows closing in on him from all sides, and still be alive at the end of the Second World War viz the second volume of the book.

What saved him was numerous favorable coincidents; so numerous indeed that they would appear improbabale in a work of fiction. On some occasions, his marriage to a Christian wife, a concert violinist, worked in his favor; on others, the courage of friends of the family, like the lady dentist, who, among other services, dared to hide Klemperer's completed diary pages in her home - despite the danger of Gestapo raids - and thus saved this document for posterity; at other points the leniency of an official helped (Klemperer's World-War-I-medal for bravery, or his renown as a Professor of Romance Philology tended to summon respect). Klemperer first suffered the pressures put on Jews in Nazi Germany to leave the country (that was the policy before The Second World War); roughly half of the German Jews did leave, but not Klemperer, who remained in his hometown, Dresden, because he could imagine no future for himself as a professer of Romance philology outside of Germany. Of course, the future stopped for him inside the country as well. Humiliations for Jews went from bad to worse as the War went on. Jews e.g. were no longer permitted to use a seat when they rode in a tram; they had to stand on the platform. On one occasion, when Klemperer was there, the tramdriver addressed him in a sympathetic fashion talk to openly in this moronic madness of a War." Since Jews were not permitted to use bomb shelters, the Klemperers were separated on the night of the worst air raid on Dresden in February 1945, because his wife got pulled into a shelter that he mustn't enter. By a near miracle the two found each other again at the border of the Elbe after the event, and his wife pulled the yellow star off him; he then survived the remainder of the war by posturing as an "Aryan" who lost all his identification I can tell you about the Third Reich, you won't be able to realize its real atmosphere. Life under that dictatorship is not transmittable by mere words." The sensation is that Klemperer's diaries do transmit that atmosphere, and in enormously precise words. The authenticity of the account arises from the peculiar perspective of a diarist, who, at any given point, possesses neither a privileged view of the future, nor easy hindsight-cleverness.

An example is Klemperer's poignant account of the deportation of the Dresden Jews. Trembling he might be with the next transport, he was at pains to gather all available information, but with little success. The fate of the deported was strictly prohibited knowledge, and rumors were ineffectual in this era of universal mutual distrust. At first, he even ponders what to pack in a bag in the event of his own deportation. He slowly realizes that people who are carted off probably won't need bags, being definitely muted as they disappear; three years into the War he at last concludes that they probably all get killed. Auschwitz especially, he suspects, must be a slaughterhouse ("Schlachthaus"). But till the end of the war he does not learn to the millions, that some people are read out for immediate destruction at the trains' arrival ramps, that people are purposefully annihilated by forced labor and hunger, by medical experiments, and gassings, comes to him only after the War.

Klemperer's portrayal of the non-Jewish Germans permits no easy generalizations. By at least as great a number of his German compatriots was he shown friendliness as unfriendliness. The behavior of the civilians was frequently tolerable, the chicanery and humiliations typically coming from the uniformed representatives of the Party, as the Gestapo. A group among the civilians that did show heinous behavior in toto was the Hitler Youth, into whom the fear and hatred of Jews was drilled unremittingly from the tenderest age by the Party Youth organization, which often caused rifts in families where no such fanaticism had originally ruled.

This is certainly an account of history from which one can learn - important both for Germany in particular and for mankind in general, as a portrayal of human behavior under a terrible dictatorship, in which the varnish of human civilization cracked, and man stood revealed as the beast he can be. The book's instructive power lies in its precision; it is the most authentic book I ever read about the Third Reich.

One maybe even more remarkable feature is Klemperer's immense readability. This diarist writes well, never even loses his humour and dares to joke in the face of mortal danger. I've no notion how he could have mastered such detachment, and nearly as great as my admiration for the subject matter presented in the book is that for the great style of its author

As a historian and teacher, I've read extensively about the Holocaust. Never before however have I come across such a riveting accounting of the horrors of Nazi Germany. Walter Klemperer, a learned professor of literature, uses his journal to analytically examine the increasing restrictions placed on Jews, and himself, a practicing Christian of Jewish origins. His diary affords the reader a compelling look into everyday life in Germany. Though he is affected by anti-Semitic decrees, his observations are grounded more upon his views as a German. That is what makes this diary such a valuable reading experience -- his views, are that of an everyday German, albeit a proclaimed Jew. His intense disgust with the Nazi rule stems equally from his horror with what it does to Germany as much as what it does to him personally. The mounting tension he and his wife encounter as their lives become increasingly difficult is both heartbreaking and spell-binding. The reader is introduced into the Klemperer world, including the people who populate it, as well as the inner musings of the author, who faces the torments of the times with all too real human reactions. His doubts, fears, insecurities, and triumphs come to light brilliantly in this diary. As you discover Klemperer's world, you'll not soon forget it. This book has had a tremendous impact upon my understanding of this time period and has caused me to rethink many of my views of it. Any serious student of the era, or even those people who have a casual interest in the subject will find this diary to be one of the most rewarding reading experiences of the year! Don't miss it!

If you like journals and diaries (and are a historical buff as well)you will be spell-bound by this book. Because there is so very much detail of Victor's day-to-day life, you are soon living with him as he documents his worries of money and losing the joys of his life - one by one -to the threshold of death. You dread what the next day will bring right along with him. It is a very human book showing all of Victor's foibles and irritating tendencies which are many. But you end up liking him anyway because he bears up under the horrors with spurts of courage and conviction and you know you could do no better, if as well. It is far too vivid in showing the truth of man's inhumanity to man to allow you to remain comfortable while reading it, but unlike many other books of that era, Victor's diaries are about the little things we live with and understand and constantly made me ask myself "would I have done the right thing in this or that circumstance." Because it is a two-part diary (the second half is just in the process of being published,I think), the worst was having it abruptly end! Having lived with Victor literally for so long I felt ripped apart from his life when the first book ended.

Klemperer's courage-and that of his wife and a tiny circle of confidants-and his almost superhuman endurance made possible the remarkable feat of keeping an almost daily diary during years of a starvation diet, Gestapo terror, persecution, exhausting physical labour, etc. Many media reviews refer to Klemperer's vivid description of the mechanics of Nazi persecution and criminality, which is indeed a compelling feature of the diaries, and an important testimony. But, more profoundly, Klemperer's diaries demonstrate that the Nazis emphatically failed in their attempt to dehumanise and destroy Klemperer. If anything, the somewhat unlikeable intellectual of the early diary is tempered into a figure of true greatness in the second volume--just as the persecution he endures reaches an almost fatal intensity.

This is perhaps the key insight offered by Klemperer's diaries: they demonstrate that, while the Nazis did everything in their power to do so, they did not in fact rob Klemperer of his dignity, his inner dignity as a sensitive and ethical human being. Our century has tended to see victims of evil as largely passive and pathetic. We have forgotten that it is possible to die nobly. Klemperer's diaries remind us that the Jews, massacred by the millions, were not necessarily deprived of their humanity and dignity even as they were put to death. Photographs cannot testify to this, in fact they tend to convey the opposite impression. It is only the whispering of the soul on its way to meet its Maker which could testify to this. Klemperer's diaries are something similar.

Some readers will take offense at a small fraction of Klemperer's opinions, chiefly his hostility to Zionism, which he saw as basically another race-based idealogy. This disagreement should not be allowed to become an obstacle to an understanding of the clear meaning of his diaries.

Klemperer's diaries are magnificent and should be widely read, not just because of their vivid and detailed account of life during the Nazi years, but because they are proof that the bestial violence of the Nazis could not and did not deprive the Nazi's victims of their humanity; many millions died and are unable to affirm this; Klemperer lived and testifies to this truth on behalf of them all.

You probably remember the old folk wisdom that a frog plunged into boiling water will hop out immediately, while a frog placed in cold water that is slowly heated will stay put even as it's boiled to death. The latter method was applied to Germany's Jews beginning in 1933, when Hitler became Chancellor and effectively ended the Weimar Republic overnight. Victor Klemperer, the irascible philologist who kept a diary for most of his adult life, is a most discerning frog. This volume of his diaries stretches from Hitler's ascent to power to the outbreak of World War II. During that time, Klemperer and his fellow Jews in Dresden saw their civil liberties slowly stripped away from them, along with their property and money.

What makes this such a fascinating read is Klemperer himself. By turns depressed, anxious and furious, this gentle, learned man discovers that his pride in being a true German is misplaced. Although Klemperer has converted to Christianity out of sincere solidarity with what he perceives as his true culture, this does nothing to make him anything but a Jew in the eyes of National Socialism. His shock at this discovery is soon matched by a determination to outlast his tormentors or, at least, avoid a terrible fate at their hands for as long as possible.

Why Germany fell prey to such atypical thuggery will remain a bone of contention for historians for centuries to come. But Victor Klemperer's diaries make it clear that, from the start, the Nazis intended to live down to their reputation. It is equally clear that, for Jew and Gentile alike, many Germans found themselves unable to fathom the evil of Hitler's regime until it was much too late.

Getting to know Klemperer through his diary is an enjoyable experience. He can be short-tempered and moody, yet also sardonic and brilliantly prescient. He's human and World War II at this late remove doesn't give us too many mere humans thanks to the pain of remembrance, which too often demands heroes. Klemperer's day-to-day existence is a testament to the will to outlast and outwit evil. It is not heroic in scale, but it is honest.

This was an excellent book and chock full of interesting information. It is a first person account written as the events were unfolding. It's too bad that it stops at the end of 1941, as I would like to know what happened next and I am waiting for the next volume. Klemperer's knowledge of the literature of the French Revolution and the comparisons he frequently draws between France of the French Revolution and Germany of the Nazi Era made me want to do some studies of that time period as well. The cycles of history?