I Will Bear Witness, Volume 1
A Diary of the Nazi Years: 1933-1941
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4.6 • 7 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The publication of Victor Klemperer's secret diaries brings to light one of the most extraordinary documents of the Nazi period. "In its cool, lucid style and power of observation," said The New York Times, "it is the best written, most evocative, most observant record of daily life in the Third Reich." I Will Bear Witness is a work of literature as well as a revelation of the day-by-day horror of the Nazi years.
A Dresden Jew, a veteran of World War I, a man of letters and historian of great sophistication, Klemperer recognized the danger of Hitler as early as 1933. His diaries, written in secrecy, provide a vivid account of everyday life in Hitler's Germany.
What makes this book so remarkable, aside from its literary distinction, is Klemperer's preoccupation with the thoughts and actions of ordinary Germans: Berger the greengrocer, who was given Klemperer's house ("anti-Hitlerist, but of course pleased at the good exchange"), the fishmonger, the baker, the much-visited dentist. All offer their thoughts and theories on the progress of the war: Will England hold out? Who listens to Goebbels? How much longer will it last?
This symphony of voices is ordered by the brilliant, grumbling Klemperer, struggling to complete his work on eighteenth-century France while documenting the ever- tightening Nazi grip. He loses first his professorship and then his car, his phone, his house, even his typewriter, and is forced to move into a Jews' House (the last step before the camps), put his cat to death (Jews may not own pets), and suffer countless other indignities.
Despite the danger his diaries would pose if discovered, Klemperer sees it as his duty to record events. "I continue to write," he notes in 1941 after a terrifying run-in with the police. "This is my heroics. I want to bear witness, precise witness, until the very end." When a neighbor remarks that, in his isolation, Klemperer will not be able to cover the main events of the war, he writes: "It's not the big things that are important, but the everyday life of tyranny, which may be forgotten. A thousand mosquito bites are worse than a blow on the head. I observe, I note, the mosquito bites."
This book covers the years from 1933 to 1941. Volume Two, from 1941 to 1945, will be published in 1999.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In April 1935, Klemperer (1881-1960) was a Protestant professor of French literature at Dresden University and a front-line veteran of WWI. By early May, he was simply a Jew and, like other Jews, forcibly retired. His marriage to an Aryan gave him (precarious) protection, and by 1945, he was one of only 198 registered Jews left in Dresden. Through it all, Klemperer kept a diary (Vol. II, 1942-1945, is due out in 1999) that turns out to be one of the most important to come out of Nazi Germany. While his early entries are filled with work and health, as circumstances worsened his focus turns to the nuances of Nazism's degrading influence. Small acts of kindness and solidarity from Gentiles were surprisingly frequent, yet pervasive isolation and lack of courage left real resistance a fantasy for everyone but the Wends (Catholic Slav peasants) and the Communists (whom Klemperer would later join). Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of this book is Klemperer's parallel record of the insidious progress of laws that stripped Jews of their rights and of the propaganda and censorship that stripped the Germans of their judgment. But through it all, Klemperer maintained his "commitment to Germanness," making his account more akin to the complexities recorded in Peter Gay's recent My German Question than Daniel Goldhagen's simplistic Hitler's Willing Executioners. The diaries weren't intended for publication--they are in part a m lange of notes for a study of Nazi manipulation of language and jottings regarding quotidian concerns about Klemperer's teeth, the cat's health or the price of supplies. This catch-all quality adds veracity to Klemperer's shrewd understanding of Germany's nightmarish decline, however, evincing the kind of clarity that usually comes with hindsight. First serial to the New Yorker; audio rights to Random, all others to Aufbau Verlag.
