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I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942-1945

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I devoured the roughly 1500 pages of Victor Klemperer's diary 1933-1945 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 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 favorable coincidents -- so many of them that they would appear improbable in a work of fiction. On some occasions, his marriage to a Christian wife, a concert pianist, worked in his favor; on others, the courage of friends of the family, like the dentist, who dared to hide Klemperer's completed diary pages in her home - despite the danger of Gestapo raids - to save them 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).

In this second volume, it is shown how humiliations for Jews went from bad to worse as the War climaxed. Jews e.g. were no longer permitted to use a seat when they rode in a tram. On one occasion, when Klemperer was on a tram-platform (where he was permitted to stand), the tramdriver addressed him in a sympathetic fashion saying: "What a relief to see your yellow star. At last someone to talk to openly in this moronic madness of a War." By a near miracle, Klemperer and his wife survived the Dresden air raid in February 1945, 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.

My mother used to say: "No matter what 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. Klemperer surmises, no sooner than three years into the War, that they probably all get killed. Auschwitz especially, he suspects, must be a slaughterhouse. But only after the end of the war he learns that the number of victims runs to the millions, that some people were read out for immediate destruction at the trains' arrival ramps, that people were purposefully annihilated by forced labor and hunger, by medical experiments, and gassings.

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 suppressors, as the Gestapo. Heinous behavior was shown by the Hitler Youth in toto, a group 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.

As with Volume One (see my review), 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 Nazi Germany in the 12 years of that regime 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.

As the story continues here, the years of tyranny of National Socialism reach their climax, so that Klemperer, a Jew 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. Even the most simple and basic freedoms are denied them, so 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 reads in horror as Victor and Eva continue to be persecuted and 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.

In sum, Klemperer seems to acknowledge that life in Nazi Germany was a hell for all of the citizens, Jew and non-Jew alike. He pointedly gives credit to all the Aryans who assit Eva nd him as they flee from the Nazis into the more anonymous countryside in the tumult and confusion caused by the firebombing of Dresden. This, like the first volume, is a book that should become required reading for college students in world history.

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.

Victor Klemperer is a spokesman. With characteristic German precision, he articulates the daily victimization and humiliation of the Jews by the Third Reich as it removes the privileges of citizenship one by one, from tram tickets to life itself. Each day becomes a surreal ritual of survival, finding food bereft of rations, hiding anything that might offend an uninvited Gestapo searching his home, speaking softly to discern the fate of those shipped to labor camps, trying to divine the future and to understand the past while utterly damning the present. Klemperer's testimony alone is worth our time, so that we may better understand how far we can stray from civilization.

But then Victor Klemperer is also a hero. As I read his diaries, I began to realize the bravery of his writing and of those who hid the pages for him. Klemperer's opinions of the Third Reich are explicit. Exposure would have ended his life immediately. I kept wondering whether I could ever do that, say, if the mayor declared Italians to be the Master Race and blue-eyed blonds were systematically searched, deported and killed. Would I care so much for posterity, and for the future of humanity, that I would dare to write what is right no matter the consequence, to expose evil in the midst of it, and perhaps to die for it? Victor did. Reading his diary is to honor that heroism.

But then Victor Klemperer is also a human being. He wrestles mightily with his German heritage, with his privileges by marriage to an Aryan, with his being alive while others disappeared. Through all the terror, he is still willing to seek out trust when mistrust is the word to live by. He is saddened by the devastating bombing of Dresden, not vengeful. When I expect his words to be filled with hatred, I am struck by their frequent ambivalence and even passion. Klemperer is a complex person, like most human beings, like you and me. This is a diary that confirms that, when ordinary people are put into extraordinary circumstances, they become extraordinary. As is this book.

I feel I share a miniscule slice of Klemperer's heroism by reading every word of his (as translated) diaries. I wish his LTI was translated in English and widely(and affordably) available. If you consider human nature an important matter, or remember your sixth-grade introduction on "man's inhumanity to man" (excuse the gender mess there)and wonder why that was worth reading about, you must read this book. So many insightful philosophical, theological and sociological wrtings came from the WWII era because the essential truths of humanity's condition were laid bare for many of the observer-participants in the horrible conflict. Klemperer precisely and heroically relates what amounts to some of that exposed raw data, from a perspective that is tragically and wildly underrepresented--that of a German civilian Jew, alive and in Germany throughout the war, but in at least occasional contact with others: Jew, gentile and monstrosity.

Depending on your understanding of God and God's intervention in human affairs, this book may have much more (and very complex)to say about God's place in Klemperer's life and Klemperer's in God's universe.

Of the other comments, I find only one impression that strikes me as troubling. I think that neither Klemperer' personal, astounding ability to adapt to misery and maintain self-truth nor the occasional pleasant human interactions nor Nazi Germany's eventual military defeat nor the failure of the "final solution" to eliminate all of the Jews of Nazi-occupied territory signify an ultimate victory for good over evil, etc. If you imagine all the books that all those Klemperer describes being abused,lied to, humiliated, injured, herded, deloused, robbed and murdered(etc.) would write, and the sad and disgusting track record of humanity since...including the commonplace manipulations of language and atrocious applications of perverted science by so many subsequent evil rulers, there is precious little over which to organize a victory dance for humanity's use of language, technology or other human beings.

I wish more people were buying it.

I have read both volumes of Mr.Klemperer's diaries and find them to be the most extensive report on the situation in Germany during the Hitler regime from the standpoint of the individual citizen. I feel that these diaries should be read by everyone with an interest in gaining a factual understanding of the daily life of the German population. Mr. Klemperer's fears are outweighed by his desire to write the truth and bear witness to the destruction of a people. I strongly recommend this book to everyone.

The extraordinary value of Klemperer's heroic diaries reside in their rich detail. Day after day, under the most unnerving circumstances imaginable, this decent, perceptive man took the time to observe and record the quotidien outrages of the Nazi horror. The result is a kind of huge pointillist canvas in which every dot of infamy, every speck of malevolence, has been precisely set down. The marvel--one might even say the miracle--is that, even in the face of Gestapo searches, any one of which might easily have resulted in his and his wife's deportation and certain murder, Klemperer had not only the self-possession but the courage to persevere.

One observation he makes in this second installment of the Diaries will doubtless fuel the ongoing debate as to the culpability of ordinary non-Jewish Germans in the Holocaust, and that is that many Germans, even those in official posts, were apparently unaware not only of the death camps but even of the severe depradations under which Jews were forced to live. One German, for example, is cited as believing that one could see many more Jews in the streets in 1942 because they were heartened by America's entry into the war, whereas, as Klemperer points out, 'the Jews were more frequently to be seen on the streets because they were forbidden to take the tram', and 'the man was completely unaware of this.' Now, whether this was inadvertant or willful ignorance is a lively question, but this and other examples cited by Klemperer seem to indicate that many Germans did at least appear to be unaware of the full extent of the mad repressive decrees daily exacted against their Jewish neighbors.

Some, however, clearly did know, and, as Klemperer shows, were not altogether comfortable with the passivity of their knowledge. One day he has an encounter in the street in Dresden and his description of it in his diary nicely exemplifies the dignified magnanimity with which this extraordinary man treated the guilt of his much more fortunate German compatriots. 'On Warplatz,' he says, 'two gray-haired ladies, teachers of about sixty years of age, such as often came to my lectures and talks. They stop, one comes toward me, holding out her hand. I think: a former auditor, and raise my hat. But I do not know her after all, nor does she introduce herself. She only smiles and shakes my hand, says: "You know why!" and goes before I can say a word. Such demonstrations (dangerous for both parties!) are said to happen frequently. The opposite of the recent: "Why are you still alive, you rogue! " And both of these in Germany and in the middle of the twentieth century.--'

Essential as this and the first installment are for any understanding of the Holocaust, both would be much improved by much more thorough annotation. Still, that will take time, and English editor and translator Martin Chalmers has produced an admirable edition for the time being.

Because my friends all know what a book-hound I am, people often ask me what my all-time favorite book is. Admittedly the answer to this would change over time, but, at present, "I Will Bear Witness" is the one that first pops into my mind.

I found this very personal account of the days and nights of a German Jewish man--an inoffensive and formerly rather conservative German nationalist academic married to a Gentile--during the Nazi terror regime to be absolutely breathtaking. Indeed, I was so caught up in his account that I took an unexpected day of vacation from work just to not interrupt my reading once I had started.

Further, I found myself sprawled on my bed, as is sometimes customary with me, surrounded by ancillary books, atlases, and maps --a behavior that signifies I'm reading a book that has utterly gripped me and a book that is expanding my horizons.

Klemperer was (just barely) saved from being sent to a concentration camp due to his marriage to a non-Jew. However, he lived every day under the threat of torture and deportation to a camp and his journal tells of the years of grinding anxiety over his fate and the fate of his wife, friends, and relatives-many of whom were taken. It also speaks to the minutiae of life under the Nazi's--such things as their penchant for legalisms to justify their treatment of the Jews embodied in his incessant embroilment in Nazi demands that he take part in the legalisms of their confiscation of his property. Moreover, as the war draws to a close, he draws a stunning portrait of life as a war refugee--a picture that applies to war refugees the world over throughout time.

Kudos to those who elevated this book to number one among the history choices-it deserves it and in my mind deserves even more.

Victor Klemperer's diary of the years of the Hitler dictatorship and his recording of the day-to-day lives of the Jews of Dresden, his thoughtful and insightful commentary on the methods (particularly the language of the propaganda) of the Third Reich, the heart-wrenching stories of those who were taken away never to be seen again, his experience in the firebombing of Dresden in 1945 and his miraculous journey home should be required reading for everyone about the horrors of tyranny and war. It is also a tribute to the true human spirit and the power of the intellect. Klemperer never lost his determination to live, despite all the blows of terror that were aimed at him, his family, and his friends. That he believed there was something to live for--in the midst of utter barbarity--should inspire all of us to work for a better world. It did me.

A remarkable record of a dark time. Reading it gives one the courage to carry on in the dark times that have come again.

After reading both volumes in English, I cannot think of anything I
ever read on any subject that I found more interesting. I have read
far more depressing accounts of the Holocaust (for example Alexander
Donat's great "The Holocaust Kingdom" which I also highly
recommend though more as a piece of Holocaust literature), but to me
Klemperer's diaries are much more profound than "just another
survivor's story".

What distinguishes Klemperer's work is first
of all that he is a great writer - he was also, I think, something of
a hypochondriac, and extremely sensitive, so that events that might
have gone unremarked by someone less perceptive or less articulate are
described brilliantly, in real-time, as they occur. For example, when
he remarks that the authorities have asked for a complete inventory of
all their possessions, and he wonders to himself why they would want
this, but matter-of-factly tells the Nazis what is his and what
belongs to his Aryan wife.

Klemperer is inspiring in the way he
describes his determination to complete his survey of French
Literature even as all his possessions are taken and long after he
could ever hope to find a publisher in Nazi Germany. Some readers may
find his literary discussions boring, but I personally found it
particularly fascinating to read his comments on "The Forsythe
Saga", for example.

There is enough material in these books to
form the basis of a semester-long undergraduate course. In this
respect I would compare it to the "Tale of Genji" or
"The Structure of Scientific Revolutions". I hope that
college students will write term papers on themes in Klemperer's
memoirs for years to come. It would be fascinating to trace
Klemperer's relationship with and attitude towards any one of a number
of people described in his diaries.

I have recently managed to buy
the original German edition ... as well as an abridged version in
German for young readers. I would love to see the abridged version
published in English and I would [love to see] a side-by-side
bilingual edition. The publishers could also have included more
photographs (there is one photograph on the dust jacket of one of the
English-language volumes that is not included the bound text). If
there is ever a deluxe edition of this work published it would
certainly be worth buying.