Victor Klemperer > Quotes

“To me the Zionists, who want to go back to the Jewish state of A.D. 70 (destruction of Jerusalem by Titus) are just as offensive as the Nazis. With their nosing after blood, their ancient "cultural roots," their partly canting, partly obtuse winding back of the world they are altogether a match for the National Socialists. That is the fantastic thing about the National Socialists, that they simultaneously share in a community of ideas with Soviet Russia and with Zion.”
― Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness 1933-41: A Diary of the Nazi Years

“Academics love the semicolon; their hankering after logic demands a division which is more emphatic than a comma, but not quite as absolute a demarcation as a full stop.”
― Victor Klemperer, The Language of the Third Reich: LTI--Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist's Notebook

“Words can be like tiny doses of arsenic: they are swallowed unnoticed, appear to have no effect, and then after a little time the toxic reaction sets in after all.”
― Victor Klemperer, The Language of the Third Reich: LTI--Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist's Notebook

“We hear a lot about Palestine now; it does not appeal to us. Anyone who goes there exchanges nationalism and narrowness for nationalism and narrowness.”
― Victor Klemperer, I Shall Bear Witness: The Diaries 1933-41

“Curious:
At the very moment modern technology annuls all frontiers and distances
(flying, wireless, television, economic interdependance),
the most extreme nationalism is raging.”
― Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness 1933-41: A Diary of the Nazi Years

“I am not a dictator, I have only simplified democracy.”
― Victor Klemperer, I Shall Bear Witness: The Diaries 1933-41

“That is the fantastic thing about the National Socialists, that they simultaneously share in a community of ideas with Soviet Russia and with Zion.”
― Victor Klemperer, I Shall Bear Witness: The Diaries 1933-41

“March 18...[1945]
Brief morning reflection arisen from great love. In fact, the main point after all is that for forty years we have so much loved one another and do love one another; in fact, I am not at all sure at all that all this is going to come to an end. For certain, nothingness--en tant que individual consciousness, and there is the true nothingness--is altogether probable, and anything else highly improbable. But have we not continually experienced, since 1914 and even more since 1933 and with ever greater frequency in recent weeks, the most utterly improbable, the most monstrously fantastic things? Has not what was formerly completely unimaginable to us become commonplace and a matter of course? If I have lived through the persecutions in Dresden, if I have lived through February 13 and these weeks as a refugee--why should I not just as well live (or rather: die) to find the two of us somewhere, Eva and I, with angel wings or in some other droll form? It's not only the word "impossible" that has gone out of circulation, "unimaginable" also has no validity anymore.”
― Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness 1942-45 A Diary of the Nazi Years

“The dominant feeling is that this reign of terror can hardly last long, but that its fall will bury us.”
― Victor Klemperer

“I believe the pogroms of November '38 made less impression on the nation than cutting the bar of chocolate for Christmas.”
― Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness 1933-41: A Diary of the Nazi Years

“Ich war noch nicht ein bißchen abgestumpft, ich war noch so ganz gewohnt, in einem Rechtsstaat zu leben, daß ich damals vieles für die tiefste Hölle hielt, was ich später höchstens für ihren Vorhof, für den Danteschen Limbo nahm. Immerhin: soviel schlimmer es auch kommen sollte, alles, was sich noch später an Gesinnung, an Tat und Sprache des Nazismus hinzufand, das zeichnet sich in seinen Ansätzen schon in diesen ersten Monaten ab.”
― Victor Klemperer, The Language of the Third Reich: LTI--Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist's Notebook

“Always the same seesaw. The fear that my scribbling could get me put into a concentration camp. The feeling that it is my duty to write, that it is my life’s task, my calling. The feeling of vanitas vanitatum, that my scribbling is worthless. In the end I go on writing anyway, the diary, the Curriculum.”
― Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness, Volume 2: A Diary of the Nazi Years: 1942-1945

“The banal perception
- all the most profound perceptions are banal,
at most one man finds a somewhat more original expression for it than another man
- that we know nothing at all except what we have experienced ourselves.”
― Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness 1933-41: A Diary of the Nazi Years

“Pity is such a shabby thing. I can torment myself with wanting to feel pity, and yet I don't succeed.”
― Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness 1933-41: A Diary of the Nazi Years

“Their opinion: If at the cost of going backwards internally, he restores Germany’s power externally, then this cost is worth while. Conditions at home can always be made good later – politics is just not a clean business. [. . .]”
― Victor Klemperer, I Shall Bear Witness: The Diaries 1933-41

“We had a friendly conversation, the man shook my hand, told me to keep my spirits up........ The next day......He stared ahead as he went past, as much a stranger as possible. In his behaviour the man probably represents 79 million Germans.”
― Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness 1933-41: A Diary of the Nazi Years

“National Socialism adapts Fascism, Bolshevism, Americanism, works it all into Teutonic Romanticism.”
― Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness 1942-45 A Diary of the Nazi Years

“In the war I was subject to military law, but subject to law nevertheless; now I am at the mercy of an arbitrary power.”
― Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness 1933-41: A Diary of the Nazi Years

“I changed Lessing’s35 words – Anyone who does not lose his reason over certain things, has no reason – into: Anyone whose heart remains calm today, has no heart.”
― Victor Klemperer, I Shall Bear Witness: The Diaries 1933-41

“I am slowly giving up hope of politics; Hitler is after all the Chosen One of his people. I do not believe that he is in the least bit shaky, I am slowly beginning to think that his regime can really still last for decades. There is so much lethargy in the German people and so much immorality and above all so much stupidity.”
― Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness 1933-1941: A Diary of the Nazi Years

“Der Jude ist der wichtigste Mann in Hitlers Staat: er ist der volkstümlichste Türkenkopf und Sündenbock, der volkstümliche Gegenspieler, der einleuchtendste Generalnenner, die haltbarste Klammer um die verschiedenartigsten Faktoren. Wäre dem Führer wirklich die angestrebte Vernichtung aller Juden gelungen, so hätte er neue erfinden müssen, denn ohne den jüdischen Teufel - "wer den Juden nicht kennt, kennt den Teufel nicht"", stand auf den Stürmertafeln -, ohne den finstern Juden hätte es nie die Lichtgestalt des nordischen Germanen gegeben. Übrigens wäre dem Führer die Erfindung neuer Juden nicht schwergefallen.”
― Victor Klemperer, The Language of the Third Reich: LTI--Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist's Notebook

“Today over breakfast we talked about the extraordinary capacity of human beings to bear and become accustomed to things. The fantastic hideousness of our existence: fear of every ring at the door, of ill-treatment, insults, fear for one’s life, of hunger (real hunger), ever new bans, ever more cruel enslavement, deadly danger coming closer every day, every day new victims all around us, absolute helplessness — and yet still hours of pleasure, while reading aloud, while working, while eating our less than meagre food, and so we go on eking out a bare existence and go on hoping.
[Dresden, 30 May 1942]”
― Victor Klemperer , I Will Bear Witness 1942-45 A Diary of the Nazi Years

“The never ending alarms, the never ending phrases, the never ending hanging out of flags, now in triumph, now in mourning—it all produces apathy. And everyone feels helpless, and everyone knows he is being lied to, and everyone is told what he has to believe”
― Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness 1933-1941: A Diary of the Nazi Years

“We are completely isolated. We have heard nothing from Annemarie Kohler, nothing from Johannes Kohler for weeks.......A frightening silence.”
― Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness 1933-41: A Diary of the Nazi Years

“I believe the pogroms of November ’38 made less impression on the nation than cutting the bar of chocolate for Christmas.”
― Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness 1933-1941: A Diary of the Nazi Years

“It is with a certain lethargy that I let everything take its course.”
― Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness 1933-1941: A Diary of the Nazi Years

“Antisemitismus als soziale, als religiös und wirtschaftlich begründete Abneigung ist zu allen Zeiten und in allen Völkern, bald hier, bald dort, bald schwächer, bald stärker, aufgetreten; ihn an sich gerade den Deutschen und ihnen allein zuzurechnen, wäre durchaus ungerecht.”
― Victor Klemperer, The Language of the Third Reich: LTI--Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist's Notebook

“I only have the quite childish horror of the grave and of nothingness”
― Victor Klemperer, I Shall Bear Witness: The Diaries 1933-41

“Socialism has now become completely or almost completely identical with Bolshevism; that”
― Victor Klemperer, I Shall Bear Witness: The Diaries 1933-41

“In a pharmacy toothpaste with a swastika. A mood of fear such as must have existed in France under the Jacobins. No one fears for their lives yet--but for bread and freedom.”
― Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness 1933-41: A Diary of the Nazi Years