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The Diaries of Victor Klemperer
I Will Bear Witness 1942-45 A Diary of the Nazi Years
576 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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4627 people want to read
About the author
Victor Klemperer
72 books119 followersVictor Klemperer (9 October 1881 – 11 February 1960) worked as a commercial apprentice, a journalist and eventually a Professor of Literature, specialising in the French Enlightenment at the Technische Universität Dresden. His diaries detailing his life under successive German states -the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic- were published in 1995. His recollections on the Third Reich have since become standard sources; extensively quoted by Saul Friedlander, Michael Burleigh and Richard J. Evans.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 48 reviews
June 4, 2010
This is the second volume of Klemperer's diaries (you don't need to read them in order, but you ought to). It's January 1942. The war is swirling around him and the deportations have begun in earnest. One by one Klemperer's friends are arrested, deported or commit suicide; he himself expects to be picked up at any time and contemplates ending his life. But he is determined to live, to "bear witness" to the atrocities around him, the many greater and lesser agonies he and other Jews endure. He is reproached at one point by an acquaintance who tells him no one is going to care about the details he records, and Klemperer responds, "It's not the big things that are important to me, but the everyday life of tyranny, which gets forgotten. A thousand mosquito bites are worse than a blow to the head. I observe, note down the mosquito bites."
Curiously, Klemperer encounters a great deal of sympathy and friendliness from everyday Germans; many Aryan friends and acquaintances help in small ways, and strangers approach him on the street to tell him to bear up because it can't last forever. He writes, "Taken individually ninety-nine percent of the male and female workers are undoubtedly more or less extremely anti-Nazi, well-disposed to the Jews, opposed to the war, weary of tyranny..., but fear of the one percent loyal to the regime, fear of prison, ax, and bullet binds them."
Klemperer's description of the fire-bombing of Dresden was breathtaking. The bombing probably saved his life; the last of the Jews were being rounded up and he expected his turn to come any day now, but in the chaos that followed the attack on the city, he and his wife took the opportunity to take off his star, change their names and run like hell. So the reader follows them to their trek across Germany to the American occupation zone and safety. Then, after the armistice, their two-week journey back to Dresden (mostly on foot). The end of the war is not the end of their troubles, alas. But they reach Dresden and are well-received there, and will pick up their lives where they left off.
This is a very intelligent, observant and dedicated diarist, and these books are an inestimably important work of history. I look forward to reading the third and last volume, detailing Klemperer's life in post-war Communist Germany.
Curiously, Klemperer encounters a great deal of sympathy and friendliness from everyday Germans; many Aryan friends and acquaintances help in small ways, and strangers approach him on the street to tell him to bear up because it can't last forever. He writes, "Taken individually ninety-nine percent of the male and female workers are undoubtedly more or less extremely anti-Nazi, well-disposed to the Jews, opposed to the war, weary of tyranny..., but fear of the one percent loyal to the regime, fear of prison, ax, and bullet binds them."
Klemperer's description of the fire-bombing of Dresden was breathtaking. The bombing probably saved his life; the last of the Jews were being rounded up and he expected his turn to come any day now, but in the chaos that followed the attack on the city, he and his wife took the opportunity to take off his star, change their names and run like hell. So the reader follows them to their trek across Germany to the American occupation zone and safety. Then, after the armistice, their two-week journey back to Dresden (mostly on foot). The end of the war is not the end of their troubles, alas. But they reach Dresden and are well-received there, and will pick up their lives where they left off.
This is a very intelligent, observant and dedicated diarist, and these books are an inestimably important work of history. I look forward to reading the third and last volume, detailing Klemperer's life in post-war Communist Germany.
August 27, 2017
This is exactly the same review that I left for "I Will Bear Witness 1933-41 A Diary of the Nazi Years". Why? Because the review still stands for this second volume. To say this book was a fun and enjoyable read wouldn't be accurate. To say that it's worth reading would be accurate. This is the second volume of the diary kept by Victor Klemperer - a Jewish-born Christian academic married to an 'Aryan' wife living in Dresden, Germany - during the Nazi years. This volume covers the years from 1942 to 1945. It's a bird's-eye view into the daily life and struggles of a non-Aryan man in the revolting grips of Adolph Hitler and Nazism. He is an incredibly perceptive and insightful man when it comes to the regime around him and he's charmingly oblivious to his own faults and quirks. These diary entries were written by a man who knew that he was living in a time that would one day make the history books. He knew this and he commented accordingly. As a red-headed Christian woman I've often wondered to myself why the Jews simply did not revolt when Hitler took the stage. This books explains the answer to that in detail.
I'd recommend reading this book if you are interested in this era of our history and/or you enjoy reading well-written diaries. It will make you angry and confused and sad and in parts it will actually make you smile. Victor Klemperer was an accomplished diarist and this work is his beautiful showcase.
I'd recommend reading this book if you are interested in this era of our history and/or you enjoy reading well-written diaries. It will make you angry and confused and sad and in parts it will actually make you smile. Victor Klemperer was an accomplished diarist and this work is his beautiful showcase.
January 9, 2014
I Will Bear Witness, 1933-1941 & 1942-1945
A Diary of the Nazi Years
By Victor Klemperer
Victor Klemperer was a professor of French literature, specializing in the Enlightenment, employed at the Technical University of Dresden at the time the Nazis came to power in 1933. At that point in his career he already had a few scholarly works in print and was planning another, a project on the 18th century he continued researching and writing until circumstances forced him to postpone that work. But he did continue the personal diary he had begun many years earlier, now with the purpose of documenting not the big picture of Nazism in Germany (he would leave that to historians) but the experience of it by a single individual, along with other ordinary personal matters he had been recording for decades.
The fact that the Nazis considered him a Jew despite his conversion to Protestantism in his youth put him in the bulls-eye of their abuse. But he was married to an "Aryan," and on that account some of the harshest measures heaped on non-Aryans were sometimes blunted or postponed, including shipment to Theresienstadt, the concentration camp in Czechoslovakia where most of Dresden's Jews were to meet their deaths. He had to wear the yellow star, avoid contact with Aryans, not use public transportation, subsist on starvation rations, and would in fact have been sent off to his death within a few days had not British Lancaster bombers rained fire on the population of Dresden, Aryan and non-Aryan alike, in the spring of 1945, allowing Victor and his wife Eva to escape the city and leave behind his Jewish identity by claiming his identification papers were destroyed in the fire.
There are plenty of books about the Nazi era. What's so special about the Klemperer diaries? Why would I recommend these two volumes to anyone interested in learning what the Hitler regime was like over any work by a professional historian, however worthy that study may be?
My answer has to do with the special character of the diaries, their combination of documentation of a horror growing worse with each passing day (everyone Klemperer talks to believes such an absurd regime will surely fall within months) and the details of a middle-aged upper-middle-class couple's life, including the stresses and strains on their marriage, not all of them the result of Nazi oppression. One quickly comes to feel one is living with the Klemperers, if only as a fly on the wall, as they struggle to complete the construction of their "dream house" in a suburb just outside Dresden — Eva's obsession despite their having to subsist on a modest pension after her husband losses his university post.
The daily visits to the house site as they scrape together the money to lay a foundation, then construct modest living quarters and, of course, a garden, seem like an exercise in futility, given what the reader knows is going to happen a few years later. You want to shout at them, "Get out! Get out!" But Eva is determined to have her house, partly, one suspects, because she had given up her own career as a musicologist and performer in favor of her husband's career. Besides, Hitler really did seem too extreme, too downright surreal, to last much longer (odd, that in America he was seen as a "moderate" who would keep the Bolshevik menace in check). And, besides, as the author of these diaries keeps asserting, he, Victor Klemperer, is a German, a real German, not like the aberrations who had taken over his country, though his faith in that identity is sorely tried over the next twelve years.
The course of the Klemperer marriage, however inadvertent, is continuous and detailed. In the '30s, Victor is careful to not complain about Eva's morning fits or constant dental emergencies or her obsession with the house, but the reader wonders what is going on in the woman's mind, when (with the hindsight of history) the dreadful future seems so clearly written on the wall. But as the years pass and the noose tightens economically and in every other way around the necks of Jews, Eva meets each new deprivation with remarkable personal resources, not just sharing all of her husband's social and economic disabilities but assisting neighbors in need in the "Jews houses" where the Klemperers are finally forced to live, right down to scrubbing their floors. She also risks her freedom (as an Aryan she could have secured her own status simply by divorcing him), if not her life, by smuggling the manuscript pages of his diary to an Aryan safe house. Using her Aryan ration card she spends hours each day scrounging for food (mostly potatoes, sometimes rotten). And, yet, the Klemperers maintain a remarkably active social life, mostly with others marked as Jews but also with a handful of Aryans.
In the end, the diaries reveal the slow maturing of two human beings who are already well into middle age at the point the diaries open. Victor evolves from a slightly ivory-towerish academic into a more fully rounded person capable of both empathy and a sense of complexity for the people, all the people, he lives among; Eva, from a house-hungry spouse with possibly a grievance about the loss of her own chance at a career into a courageous and devoted spouse and neighbor. Their marriage and love for one another grows stronger with each new stress placed upon them. What seems in the early pages of the diaries a marriage held together perhaps largely by routine and convenience, by its mid-point has become a thing of unshakable devotion and deep affection.
The diaries provide documentation of many different aspects of German society under the Third Reich, despite the restriction of their being written from one man's point of view. Among these is the obvious fact that many Germans had no use for Hitler, were sympathetic to those the Nazis designated as Jews or otherwise non-Aryan and, as might be expected in a situation where getting the wherewithal just to survive became more and more difficult, were largely ignorant of the strictures Jews were living under. Why else would they risk their own freedom and lives by befriending and assisting individual Jews? There is a naïveté about some of their expressions of support — a stranger crossing the street to shake the hand of someone wearing a yellow star (much to the chagrin of the person wearing it, knowing how dangerous such an act was, primarily for the star-wearer); a shopkeeper slipping extra food into the bag of someone wearing the star and offering a whispered word of encouragement to hang on, it won't be long now till the war is over.
There are far too many of these acts, some of them a good deal more substantial than what I've indicated, to put them down to anything other than sincerity. And on the question of what ordinary Germans knew about the "Final Solution," even Jews themselves didn't realize what shipment to Theresienstadt meant until the last year or two of the war. For a time they even entertained a belief that in Theresienstadt they would at least have a better diet and get decent medical care. It's hard to believe non-Jews could have known something more, at least not ordinary working stiffs, despite the manic, irrational broadcasts by Goebbels blaming "World Jewry" for all the evils in the world (in one he insists the Jews using their American dupes were bombing Rome in order to destroy Christianity, just a first step in their plan to kill all the gentiles in the world). Even when the truth becomes clear about Auschwitz and the other death camps, some supporters of Hitler insist the Fuehrer could not have known about the camps because he was a "man of peace.”
Klemperer writes:
"...National Socialism was already [in 1923] ...powerful and popular. Except that at the time I did not yet see it like that. How comforting and depressing that is! Depressing: Hitler really was in line with the will of the German people. Comforting: One never really knows what is going on. Then the Republic seemed secure, today the Third Reich appears secure."
But he also writes, later:
"There is no German or West European Jewish question. Whoever recognizes one, only adopts or confirms the false thesis of the NSDAP and serves its cause. Until 1933 and for at least a good century before that, the German Jews were entirely German and nothing else.... The anti-Semitism, which was always present, is not at all evidence to the contrary. Because the friction between Jews and Aryans was not half as great as that between Protestants and Catholics, or between employers and employees or between East Prussians for example and southern Bavarians or Rhinelanders and Bavarians. The German Jews were part of the German nation, as the French Jews were a part of the French nation, etc. "
There seem, in fact, to be two distinct kinds of (Aryan) Germans in these diaries: Nazi thugs who descend on Jews' apartments, beat up the old women and men and steal the butter off the table before trashing the place; and "ordinary" Germans, even officials like local police who, when they had to visit the Jews Houses, doffed their hats, shook hands, apologized for the intrusion and even offered words of reassurance. One wonders how this could be the same country, never mind the same city. These "good" Germans give Victor hope, though by the end he believes the entire nation will have to be reeducated in the values he believes to have been essential to German culture dating back to the Enlightenment (he blames Romanticism for Nazism). He, happily, lives to see that day and even to reclaim his former professorship at the Technical University of Dresden, which lay then in the Soviet zone and becomes part of East Germany.
One wonders why these diaries are not more widely read as firsthand witness for that horrific period of German history. Is it because life as Klemperer records it is too complex for our sound-bite culture (some of the older men in the Jews House cheer for the Wehrmacht — they had fought against the Brits and French in the first world war and can't bring themselves to change sides). Is it because he insists early on that Zionism and Nazism are ideologically the same thing: blood = land? I keep expecting him to change his mind about Zionism after the slaughter of Jews goes into high gear in 1942-43, but he sticks to his guns. He fully expects to be one of the slaughtered, watches as his neighbors are taken away in twos and threes. He loses his faith in the Germany he believed in before 1933, but he never loses faith in the principles he believes that culture exemplified at its best.
It's impossible to summarize a work as varied and rich as these diaries, never mind give a sense for the experience of living through those years vicariously with the Klemperers. The diaries end in 1945 with a return to their suburban home after living for several weeks as refugees in Bavaria. But that return is, of course, just another beginning. The volume of the diary that takes up where these two leave off extends as far as 1959 and was published in Britain, but not in the US. Klemperer died the following year, 1960, of a heart attack.
A Diary of the Nazi Years
By Victor Klemperer
Victor Klemperer was a professor of French literature, specializing in the Enlightenment, employed at the Technical University of Dresden at the time the Nazis came to power in 1933. At that point in his career he already had a few scholarly works in print and was planning another, a project on the 18th century he continued researching and writing until circumstances forced him to postpone that work. But he did continue the personal diary he had begun many years earlier, now with the purpose of documenting not the big picture of Nazism in Germany (he would leave that to historians) but the experience of it by a single individual, along with other ordinary personal matters he had been recording for decades.
The fact that the Nazis considered him a Jew despite his conversion to Protestantism in his youth put him in the bulls-eye of their abuse. But he was married to an "Aryan," and on that account some of the harshest measures heaped on non-Aryans were sometimes blunted or postponed, including shipment to Theresienstadt, the concentration camp in Czechoslovakia where most of Dresden's Jews were to meet their deaths. He had to wear the yellow star, avoid contact with Aryans, not use public transportation, subsist on starvation rations, and would in fact have been sent off to his death within a few days had not British Lancaster bombers rained fire on the population of Dresden, Aryan and non-Aryan alike, in the spring of 1945, allowing Victor and his wife Eva to escape the city and leave behind his Jewish identity by claiming his identification papers were destroyed in the fire.
There are plenty of books about the Nazi era. What's so special about the Klemperer diaries? Why would I recommend these two volumes to anyone interested in learning what the Hitler regime was like over any work by a professional historian, however worthy that study may be?
My answer has to do with the special character of the diaries, their combination of documentation of a horror growing worse with each passing day (everyone Klemperer talks to believes such an absurd regime will surely fall within months) and the details of a middle-aged upper-middle-class couple's life, including the stresses and strains on their marriage, not all of them the result of Nazi oppression. One quickly comes to feel one is living with the Klemperers, if only as a fly on the wall, as they struggle to complete the construction of their "dream house" in a suburb just outside Dresden — Eva's obsession despite their having to subsist on a modest pension after her husband losses his university post.
The daily visits to the house site as they scrape together the money to lay a foundation, then construct modest living quarters and, of course, a garden, seem like an exercise in futility, given what the reader knows is going to happen a few years later. You want to shout at them, "Get out! Get out!" But Eva is determined to have her house, partly, one suspects, because she had given up her own career as a musicologist and performer in favor of her husband's career. Besides, Hitler really did seem too extreme, too downright surreal, to last much longer (odd, that in America he was seen as a "moderate" who would keep the Bolshevik menace in check). And, besides, as the author of these diaries keeps asserting, he, Victor Klemperer, is a German, a real German, not like the aberrations who had taken over his country, though his faith in that identity is sorely tried over the next twelve years.
The course of the Klemperer marriage, however inadvertent, is continuous and detailed. In the '30s, Victor is careful to not complain about Eva's morning fits or constant dental emergencies or her obsession with the house, but the reader wonders what is going on in the woman's mind, when (with the hindsight of history) the dreadful future seems so clearly written on the wall. But as the years pass and the noose tightens economically and in every other way around the necks of Jews, Eva meets each new deprivation with remarkable personal resources, not just sharing all of her husband's social and economic disabilities but assisting neighbors in need in the "Jews houses" where the Klemperers are finally forced to live, right down to scrubbing their floors. She also risks her freedom (as an Aryan she could have secured her own status simply by divorcing him), if not her life, by smuggling the manuscript pages of his diary to an Aryan safe house. Using her Aryan ration card she spends hours each day scrounging for food (mostly potatoes, sometimes rotten). And, yet, the Klemperers maintain a remarkably active social life, mostly with others marked as Jews but also with a handful of Aryans.
In the end, the diaries reveal the slow maturing of two human beings who are already well into middle age at the point the diaries open. Victor evolves from a slightly ivory-towerish academic into a more fully rounded person capable of both empathy and a sense of complexity for the people, all the people, he lives among; Eva, from a house-hungry spouse with possibly a grievance about the loss of her own chance at a career into a courageous and devoted spouse and neighbor. Their marriage and love for one another grows stronger with each new stress placed upon them. What seems in the early pages of the diaries a marriage held together perhaps largely by routine and convenience, by its mid-point has become a thing of unshakable devotion and deep affection.
The diaries provide documentation of many different aspects of German society under the Third Reich, despite the restriction of their being written from one man's point of view. Among these is the obvious fact that many Germans had no use for Hitler, were sympathetic to those the Nazis designated as Jews or otherwise non-Aryan and, as might be expected in a situation where getting the wherewithal just to survive became more and more difficult, were largely ignorant of the strictures Jews were living under. Why else would they risk their own freedom and lives by befriending and assisting individual Jews? There is a naïveté about some of their expressions of support — a stranger crossing the street to shake the hand of someone wearing a yellow star (much to the chagrin of the person wearing it, knowing how dangerous such an act was, primarily for the star-wearer); a shopkeeper slipping extra food into the bag of someone wearing the star and offering a whispered word of encouragement to hang on, it won't be long now till the war is over.
There are far too many of these acts, some of them a good deal more substantial than what I've indicated, to put them down to anything other than sincerity. And on the question of what ordinary Germans knew about the "Final Solution," even Jews themselves didn't realize what shipment to Theresienstadt meant until the last year or two of the war. For a time they even entertained a belief that in Theresienstadt they would at least have a better diet and get decent medical care. It's hard to believe non-Jews could have known something more, at least not ordinary working stiffs, despite the manic, irrational broadcasts by Goebbels blaming "World Jewry" for all the evils in the world (in one he insists the Jews using their American dupes were bombing Rome in order to destroy Christianity, just a first step in their plan to kill all the gentiles in the world). Even when the truth becomes clear about Auschwitz and the other death camps, some supporters of Hitler insist the Fuehrer could not have known about the camps because he was a "man of peace.”
Klemperer writes:
"...National Socialism was already [in 1923] ...powerful and popular. Except that at the time I did not yet see it like that. How comforting and depressing that is! Depressing: Hitler really was in line with the will of the German people. Comforting: One never really knows what is going on. Then the Republic seemed secure, today the Third Reich appears secure."
But he also writes, later:
"There is no German or West European Jewish question. Whoever recognizes one, only adopts or confirms the false thesis of the NSDAP and serves its cause. Until 1933 and for at least a good century before that, the German Jews were entirely German and nothing else.... The anti-Semitism, which was always present, is not at all evidence to the contrary. Because the friction between Jews and Aryans was not half as great as that between Protestants and Catholics, or between employers and employees or between East Prussians for example and southern Bavarians or Rhinelanders and Bavarians. The German Jews were part of the German nation, as the French Jews were a part of the French nation, etc. "
There seem, in fact, to be two distinct kinds of (Aryan) Germans in these diaries: Nazi thugs who descend on Jews' apartments, beat up the old women and men and steal the butter off the table before trashing the place; and "ordinary" Germans, even officials like local police who, when they had to visit the Jews Houses, doffed their hats, shook hands, apologized for the intrusion and even offered words of reassurance. One wonders how this could be the same country, never mind the same city. These "good" Germans give Victor hope, though by the end he believes the entire nation will have to be reeducated in the values he believes to have been essential to German culture dating back to the Enlightenment (he blames Romanticism for Nazism). He, happily, lives to see that day and even to reclaim his former professorship at the Technical University of Dresden, which lay then in the Soviet zone and becomes part of East Germany.
One wonders why these diaries are not more widely read as firsthand witness for that horrific period of German history. Is it because life as Klemperer records it is too complex for our sound-bite culture (some of the older men in the Jews House cheer for the Wehrmacht — they had fought against the Brits and French in the first world war and can't bring themselves to change sides). Is it because he insists early on that Zionism and Nazism are ideologically the same thing: blood = land? I keep expecting him to change his mind about Zionism after the slaughter of Jews goes into high gear in 1942-43, but he sticks to his guns. He fully expects to be one of the slaughtered, watches as his neighbors are taken away in twos and threes. He loses his faith in the Germany he believed in before 1933, but he never loses faith in the principles he believes that culture exemplified at its best.
It's impossible to summarize a work as varied and rich as these diaries, never mind give a sense for the experience of living through those years vicariously with the Klemperers. The diaries end in 1945 with a return to their suburban home after living for several weeks as refugees in Bavaria. But that return is, of course, just another beginning. The volume of the diary that takes up where these two leave off extends as far as 1959 and was published in Britain, but not in the US. Klemperer died the following year, 1960, of a heart attack.
June 8, 2009
It was a challenge to read this diary-book because it is as if you are given privy to a long (500+ pages) personal diary which is unstructured. However, I admire Professor Klemperer for having the courage of keeping the journals despite the threat of being persecuted by the Gestapo just by maintaining it. I mean who is in his right mind put his own life just for the sake of maintaining a diary? Anne Frank was in a hiding and she had nothing to do behind the cabinet by Professor Klemperer was out in the open (being in a mixed marriage, i.e., married to an Aryan) but he guarded his journal with his life particularly when Dresden was liberated by the Anglo American and he and Eva had to flee to other German cities.
I only had the copy of the years 1943-1945 and I still have to look around for the first part (before the professor started wearing the Star). That part should be equally interesting. At times, the entries to the journal are monotonous – the persistent hunger, the extended working hours, the unavailability of medicine, the sending of his friends and relatives to death camps. It is not a good-feel book and could be depressing. However, it what the holocaust is all about and the book being a journal was not meant to make it exciting in each page. My previous knowledge about what happened during that time was limited on the movies Schindler’s List, The Pianist and The Boy in Stripped Pajamas and The Diary of Anne Frank. I have other books, also courtesy of Tata J. and I look forward to reading them. It’s just that I could not read one after the other as I might not be able to get enough sleep at night. Maybe I should read a bit boring book next.
I only had the copy of the years 1943-1945 and I still have to look around for the first part (before the professor started wearing the Star). That part should be equally interesting. At times, the entries to the journal are monotonous – the persistent hunger, the extended working hours, the unavailability of medicine, the sending of his friends and relatives to death camps. It is not a good-feel book and could be depressing. However, it what the holocaust is all about and the book being a journal was not meant to make it exciting in each page. My previous knowledge about what happened during that time was limited on the movies Schindler’s List, The Pianist and The Boy in Stripped Pajamas and The Diary of Anne Frank. I have other books, also courtesy of Tata J. and I look forward to reading them. It’s just that I could not read one after the other as I might not be able to get enough sleep at night. Maybe I should read a bit boring book next.
October 5, 2017
shocking but incedible book. about 500 plus pages and from day one of this incredible diary you get a sense of a long arduous marathon that Victor had to go through, through hell. it describes his almost daily turmoil in Dresden between 1942 an 1945 (this is part 2 - part 1 was also excellent), he was old, had to worry about food, water, the SS, calls to concentration camps, he had to see his friends taken away around him one by one month after month. you get used to him asking when it will be his turn. if his notes had been found he would have been killed. the book details some of the minutae of life as a jew in Germany outside the concentration camps. the ridicule he faced and the threat to his life was incredible. the notes section at the end of the book is brilliant also. must read book if you want to understand the nazis.
March 15, 2023
Even more than the first volume of Klemperer's diaries, up to 1942, this volume conveys the full evilness of the Nazi regime. It is extremely difficult to get through, because it's so distressing. The final pages, describing the collapse of Nazi Germany, the bombing of Dresden, the American and Russian occupation, the the author's return home to Dresden are riveting.
As with any diary, we readers know what happened in the end, while the writer didn't know from day to day whether he would be arrested, sent to a concentration camp, or murdered.
I was impressed by the solidarity and generosity of many of Klemperer's friends during those horrible years, as was he, because he mentions them frequently.
As much as one thinks one knows about the horrors of the Nazi regime, one learns more from this honest and objective book.
As with any diary, we readers know what happened in the end, while the writer didn't know from day to day whether he would be arrested, sent to a concentration camp, or murdered.
I was impressed by the solidarity and generosity of many of Klemperer's friends during those horrible years, as was he, because he mentions them frequently.
As much as one thinks one knows about the horrors of the Nazi regime, one learns more from this honest and objective book.
January 27, 2021
Much better than the first book, "I Will Bear Witness 1933-41 A Diary of the Nazi Years", but both need to be read to get his outlook on his, and other's lives during this period of time.
October 31, 2024
Along with its first part which covers the years 1933 to 1941, this is a profoundly moving chronicle of human endurance under the daily grinding terror of fascism.
December 25, 2017
Brilliant masterwork of the greatest account of daily life in Nazi Germany
Victor Klemperer’s “I Will Bear Witness Vol. 2” (and 1) is the single greatest non-fiction book I know. His diary recounts what it was like to live as an everyday German (of Jewish descent even though he was a Christian married to his soulmate (an Aryan), Eva, under the increasing degradation of society under the Nazis. As an ardent anti-Nazi, he felt it his solemn duty to record everyday life, in an uncensored critique of Hitler and the brutality of the Nazis, even though he was intently aware that doing so could cost him his life (and others around him) if discovered. The downward spiral of everyday life to intensifying horror and deprivation is painfully recorded by Klemperer in such vivid detail that one cannot help but feel one knows him so well after reading these volumes. His courage (though I suspect he didn’t realize that he had it) is remarkable and inspirational. It’s impossible to separate these volumes, though Volume 2 is certainly far more brutal because of the depiction of constant threat of starvation, capture, and death he and his wife faced every day. Klemperer eventually recognized his life’s purpose was to bear witness to the horrors around him. He was a brilliant scholar of literature however his greatest life’s work was this diary. Because of this diary, I have a deeper understanding of what daily life in Germany for a Jew in a way I’ve never known through any other account. While these diaries are very long, they are so well worth the investment of time to read them. I have read these volumes twice now, and because of it my life view is greatly enriched through having done so. I cannot recommend these volumes enough.
Victor Klemperer’s “I Will Bear Witness Vol. 2” (and 1) is the single greatest non-fiction book I know. His diary recounts what it was like to live as an everyday German (of Jewish descent even though he was a Christian married to his soulmate (an Aryan), Eva, under the increasing degradation of society under the Nazis. As an ardent anti-Nazi, he felt it his solemn duty to record everyday life, in an uncensored critique of Hitler and the brutality of the Nazis, even though he was intently aware that doing so could cost him his life (and others around him) if discovered. The downward spiral of everyday life to intensifying horror and deprivation is painfully recorded by Klemperer in such vivid detail that one cannot help but feel one knows him so well after reading these volumes. His courage (though I suspect he didn’t realize that he had it) is remarkable and inspirational. It’s impossible to separate these volumes, though Volume 2 is certainly far more brutal because of the depiction of constant threat of starvation, capture, and death he and his wife faced every day. Klemperer eventually recognized his life’s purpose was to bear witness to the horrors around him. He was a brilliant scholar of literature however his greatest life’s work was this diary. Because of this diary, I have a deeper understanding of what daily life in Germany for a Jew in a way I’ve never known through any other account. While these diaries are very long, they are so well worth the investment of time to read them. I have read these volumes twice now, and because of it my life view is greatly enriched through having done so. I cannot recommend these volumes enough.
August 27, 2015
The second volume of Victor Klemperer's history of his survival during the war years. Records his daily life, continually increasing restrictions, opinions and encounters with Jewish and Arian people in Dresden. Klemperer was one of the few lucky survivors who survived thanks to his marriage to non-Jewish wife and as veteran of the first world war. However, as Nazis continued to disfrenchise any remaining Jews he would be most likely killed before Hitler's fall, if not for the bombing of Dresden in February 1945, which destroyed most of the town. Miraculously, he and his wife survived the bombing and he took off his yellow star, pretending to be someone else and getting help from still standing regime. With his wife they undertook trip south to minimise any chance to be recognised and stay with people who did not know him directly before. He was lucky to see American troops finally defeating German troops.
Another interesting development happens soon after when he decides to return to Dresden, which was taken by Russians. As most of people escape West, he travels in opposite direction.
In his book Klemperer records many examples of sympathy from the non-Jewish Germans and haunting encounters with Hitler Youth and Gestapo beasts.
His record focuses on personal experiences rather than the large world events. The example here is the Warsaw Uprising, which is only mentioned in passing in reference to Warsaw's destruction ordered by Hitler after its defeat.
Despite of that, the book as a personal record is very interesting and worth reading. The volume ends when Klamperer enters the Russian zone.
This volume is much more interesting that the first one.
Another interesting development happens soon after when he decides to return to Dresden, which was taken by Russians. As most of people escape West, he travels in opposite direction.
In his book Klemperer records many examples of sympathy from the non-Jewish Germans and haunting encounters with Hitler Youth and Gestapo beasts.
His record focuses on personal experiences rather than the large world events. The example here is the Warsaw Uprising, which is only mentioned in passing in reference to Warsaw's destruction ordered by Hitler after its defeat.
Despite of that, the book as a personal record is very interesting and worth reading. The volume ends when Klamperer enters the Russian zone.
This volume is much more interesting that the first one.
September 27, 2015
These comments apply to both Vol. I (1933-1941) and Vol. II (1942-1945). I also read his 1945-1959 diary, entitled "The Lesser Evil," which I shall review separately.
"I Shall Bear Witness" Vol. I & II, taken together, are an eye-opening account of the every day life struggles of a German Jew who wasn't even religous and was married to a Christian (the latter fact contributed to Klemperer's escaping some of the deadly effects of the Third Reich, at least until the very end). I say eye-opening, as I had no idea (1) that German Jews fared better (only a bit) better than the Jews of conquered nations and (2) that the Nazis blamed Jews for EVERYTHING bad, constantly. Also very interesting to see how the average German reacted (in both bad ways and good) to Nazi treatment of the Jews.
These volumes truly are diaries, so they require some explanation and context, and the explanatory notes from the editors do a fine job.
Fringe benefit: Klemperer's references to various people added to my reading list.
"I Shall Bear Witness" Vol. I & II, taken together, are an eye-opening account of the every day life struggles of a German Jew who wasn't even religous and was married to a Christian (the latter fact contributed to Klemperer's escaping some of the deadly effects of the Third Reich, at least until the very end). I say eye-opening, as I had no idea (1) that German Jews fared better (only a bit) better than the Jews of conquered nations and (2) that the Nazis blamed Jews for EVERYTHING bad, constantly. Also very interesting to see how the average German reacted (in both bad ways and good) to Nazi treatment of the Jews.
These volumes truly are diaries, so they require some explanation and context, and the explanatory notes from the editors do a fine job.
Fringe benefit: Klemperer's references to various people added to my reading list.
May 12, 2013
Klemperer's diary helps us to understand Nazism. Klemperer dairies give a first hand account of the atrocities faced by Jews during the reign of Hitler over Germany. His prose also chronicles many events giving explanations to why many ‘ordinary’ Germans accepted or denied the actions of the NSDAP. It is definitely proof that many Germans who later claimed not to know about the terrors associated with the Nazi regime actually knew about them by either, participating, resisting or being a bystander while it occurred. In order to learn from the mistakes of Germany during this era, comparing war plans evaluating outcomes and percentages will not suffice. The details of Klemperer’s diary that sheds the true light on the people, places, and misfortunes tell the true story of the most horrific time of the twentieth century.
February 10, 2019
This was, without doubt, the better of the two volumes of Kemperer's diaries. The diaries begin with what seems to be an endless chain of misjudgments and short sighted behaviors culminating with his refusal to even consider leaving Germany despite years of Nazi rule. His constant complaints about his life, although justified, are grating. That said, his dedication to his life's work is, in the end inspiring. His diaries leave us with a ground level view of life in Nazi Germany. This volume particularly depicts the deportation of all of his Jewish friends and acquaintances to Poland and certain death and his own very close call. His depiction of the fire bombing of Dresden and his subsequent flight are not only breathtaking but stand alone as as the best account of what life was like as Nazi Germany was in its death throes.
March 13, 2025
One of the best memoirs I’ve read of the Jewish experience in Hitler's Germany. As a linguist, Klemperer does interesting analysis of Nazi communication (especially Göebbels) and how words can be twisted from their usual meaning to a twisted meaning. It’s not an easy read, and I got a little annoyed with Klemperer's entitlement at the end, but I’m glad to have read it!
August 11, 2013
This is the second volume of Klemperer's diary and the tension begins to heighten as the reader's benefit of historical hindsight coincides with the approach of 1945 and the inevitable end to the war. However, what will be the fate of the writer and in what ways will the perceptions of those around him begin to change as the realisation that Germany will eventually surrender begins to take root?
This is the added dimension to the diaries, which are the most important addition to the study of Nazism in recent years. Those more interested in the social dynamics of Nazism and its implications on daily life, rather than big battles and missions of derring-do these diaries are an absolute must and unique in their range and insight.
This is the added dimension to the diaries, which are the most important addition to the study of Nazism in recent years. Those more interested in the social dynamics of Nazism and its implications on daily life, rather than big battles and missions of derring-do these diaries are an absolute must and unique in their range and insight.
September 9, 2024
Klemperer, a college professor who lived in Dresden, was a Jew by birthright and a Christian by acculturation and preference. Largely because of his Aryan wife, he was able to survive and document his daily life under Hitler's reign.
I accidentally read this volume (the second) first, so was plunged immediately into the worst of the Klemperers' trials. Escalating prohibitions and privations (at one point, they're forced to have their cat euthanized), Gestapo "inspections," loss of friends, and the constant threat of violence and death. Through it all, Klemperer documents not only the torments, but the grace notes of this terrible society (covert acts of respect and charity from Aryan Germans). A painful, but wonderful, read.
I accidentally read this volume (the second) first, so was plunged immediately into the worst of the Klemperers' trials. Escalating prohibitions and privations (at one point, they're forced to have their cat euthanized), Gestapo "inspections," loss of friends, and the constant threat of violence and death. Through it all, Klemperer documents not only the torments, but the grace notes of this terrible society (covert acts of respect and charity from Aryan Germans). A painful, but wonderful, read.
August 19, 2011
Second volume of Dresden languages professor Klemperer's secret diary which he kept from 1933-1945. He was spared deportation because he was married to an Aryan woman, but they were still deprived of their home, job, books, typewriter, radio, newspapers, etc. A fascinating view of the war from ground level and from those kept in the dark about what was happening, except for rumors. Klemperer and his wife amazingly survived the war (and the destruction of Dresden). His second wife compiled and deciphered the many pages of his diary that were secretly kept by Aryan friends throughout the war and published them in German in 1995 and in English in 1999.
March 1, 2015
This is as readable and absorbing as the first volume in the series. By the beginning of this volume, Victor is mostly housebound and much more isolated. I appreciated the nuances and care in explaining the details of daily life, as many movies on the Holocaust tend to show more dramatic events. In particular the decrees and the effect of each one on him is keenly felt.
The final section where the Klemperers escape Dresden and the final months of the war is especially compelling, as the bureaucracy follows them almost to the end.
The final section where the Klemperers escape Dresden and the final months of the war is especially compelling, as the bureaucracy follows them almost to the end.
March 8, 2017
This book pulls you into a life and the reader can share in the growing sense of despair felt by Dr Klemperer over the course of the Nazi era. The reader begins the journey in 1933 in a decent yet mundane world full of middle-class pedestrian concerns and slowly but constantly strips away all wealth and comfort, and then descends into injustice and despair, where the human drive for survival progressively eclipses every other concern. Not only was Dr Klemperer very lucky to have survived this ordeal, but his readers are too.
July 4, 2008
I had to read volume 2 find out whether their house in Dresden was still there after the war was over and they finally got home. Otherwise their lives only got more and more restricted, terrifying and depressing as the war drags on. It took real courage for the author to write as it was illegal to do so and he could have faced death if discovered. For that reason alone, we should read his account.
August 9, 2014
I can't give this less than five stars, I just can't. Although a little repetitive it is a fantastic memoir of living through WWII as a Jew in Germany. Something entirely unimaginable. Although intended to be written as an observer the raw emotion is clear in most of the daily struggle, struggle to find enough to eat, to keep below the radar of the Gestapo, to stay alive. It's fantastic and I have to get my hands on Vol. 1.
June 20, 2023
(Review for both volumes (1933-41 and 1942-45))
"I will bear witness" is a true diary of Victor Klemperer, a half-jew during nazi-Germany. It provides an detailed overview of what everyday life was like during this periode (pre-war and war), including the ever-growing restrictions on basic things like travel and shopping for food.
Due to its style, the book however is long and sometimes very tedious. Chances are slim I will read it again. But I have to say that it has left quite an impact.
"I will bear witness" is a true diary of Victor Klemperer, a half-jew during nazi-Germany. It provides an detailed overview of what everyday life was like during this periode (pre-war and war), including the ever-growing restrictions on basic things like travel and shopping for food.
Due to its style, the book however is long and sometimes very tedious. Chances are slim I will read it again. But I have to say that it has left quite an impact.
February 12, 2025
I can't imagine what strength is required to face death year after year without an end in sight, but it's a good reminder that in the face of abject oppression a person can still object by recording copious, damning receipts. This is a tough read but so important. Personally, don't start the book if you aren't committed to finishing it; the author risked his life to bring us these notes and it's the least we can do as a reader to hear them out in full.
August 4, 2013
In the second of the three diaries, Klemperer has passed from German citizen, through targeted Jew, back- almost- to German citizen, as the Allied draw closer to Dresden. The small hopes on which he and his wife survive draw near to extinguishment. His small entries read resoundingly. My favorite of the three diaries.
July 3, 2011
These diaries really do bear witness to the fear of the Jewish population of Dresden during the Nazi era. A first hand account of daily struggles. Klemperer draws the reader in, partly because like all human beings, he has his flaws. We sympathise, are irritated, but are compelled to read on.
May 22, 2016
Heart-wrenching tale of the ex-professor and his wife as the Nazi regime crumbles and he faces deprivation, cruelty and the possibility of being killed at any moment because of the myriad restrictions placed on Jews by the 3rd Reich's madmen in charge. Highly recommended.
August 9, 2017
A continuation of the first set of journals, Victor Klemperer continues to capture readers through his precise observations made as objectively as possible, this time during the actual war years. Stark, unforgiving and an abject lesson in man's inhumanity to man.
February 9, 2018
This took a long time to read because there was a lot to finish. The ending of a diary of a Jew married to an Aryan, and never being put in a concentration camp. To bad there isn't a 3rd installment of what happened after, and before they passed away.
December 13, 2020
The even sadder but also more exciting concluding part of Klemperer's miraculous survival story as an openly Jewish person in Nazi Germany. Essential reading for understanding not only totalitarianism but also human nature.
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March 15, 2021This is the account of Victor Klemperer, as his world comes crashing down he holds on to his wife, Eva, his diet of potatoes and his dreams. He shows enormous strength and despite the darkness that shrouds him, he still derives joy from life’s simple pleasures.
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