Product Description

This second volume of Victor Klemperer's diary covers the period from the beginning of the Holocaust to the end of the war, telling the story of Klemperer's increasing isolation, his near miraculous survival, and his growing awareness of the Holocaust as his friends and associates disappeared.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #273263 in Books
• Published on: 2000-08-03
• Format: Abridged
• Original language: German
• Binding: Paperback
• 704 pages

About the Author
Born in 1881, Victor Klemperer studied in Munich, Geneva and Paris. He was a journalist in Berlin, taught at the University of Naples and received a DSM during WWI as a volunteer in the German army. He was subsequently a professor of romance languages at the Dresden Technical College until he was dismissed as a consequence of Nazi laws in 1935. He survived the Holocaust and the war and taught again as an academic until his death in 1960.

Customer Reviews

A BOOK OF MOMENTOUS IMPORTANCE
By any literary standards, this is a quite extraordinary book. I closed the last of the 939 pages convinced that I had completed one of the half dozen most importants books I'd ever read in my life.

Because now we REALLY know just what it was like to be a Jew in Nazi Germany. Sure, we've read other books and studied, fascinated and horrified, the many tapes of Hitler and his gang in their pomp, at their most bestial. But few books have ever documented so precisely, so accurately, so disturbingly the gross deprivations, the wilful cruelties of life for the Jew in the Reich years.

Klemperer was a distinguished academic who suffered steady demotion in his work before finally losing his job and any opportunity of other work. But time on his hands, although a painful process to endure from a psychological point of view, gave Klemperer the chance to wield a formidable pen in defiance of his foes. The world should be grateful to him for his courage and bravery in compiling these diaries for betrayal or the emergence of them before the mayhem was over would have meant certain death. Victor Klemperer and his Aryan wife (her presence alone ensured he survived the early banishment to the concentration camps) somehow lived through and emerged from a nightmare. Vivid confirmation of the hunger, the cruel taunts of ordinary Germans and the appalling deprivations are listed here in meticulous detail.

But what is most revealing are the little psychological cruelties, the true trait of the madmen, in Germany at that time. Two things struck me especially. Jews were eventually banned from buying flowers, the simplest of pleasures to brighten one's home and one's life. And then, a decree is issued demanding that all pets belonging to Jews be put down. The Klemperers are unable to prevent their beloved little cat meeting such a fate.

To suffer physical deprivation is bad enough. But to endure constant mental angst through week after week, month following month and year after year requires a fortitude and stoicism that might just be beyond many of us today.

The story of just how Klemperer actually survived the entire war in Germany is revealed within these pages. It makes for compelling reading. But for anyone studying the period, any student of the Nazi horror, this book ought to be required reading.

It is at once disturbing and horrifying yet, equally, warm and moving. The miracle of deliverance, which Klemperer never expected, is sufficient to move the reader close to tears. It is a powerful book of enormous importance to this and every generation that follows.

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amazing, simply amazing
Its almost two years ago that i read Victor Klemperer amazing story. And yet it still haunts me. Although i have read an extensive amount of literature about WW2 this was the book that somehow gave me an understanding - and somehow an answer to the question thats been bugging me for years: Why was it possible for the germans to proceed with the Holocaust?

Klemperers diary gave me somekind of an answer. And he does it beautifully by writing about the daily life - as a german and a Jew in Germany during Hitlers regime from 1933-45. As a reader its like being there. He is not a hero - not a fearless warrior - just an ordinary university teacher. And yet he survived somehow. Please read this book if you really want to know how it was being a Jew in Germany under nazi rule. Or - read it just because its such a amazing story.

A Masterpiece
This book is a thoroughly absorbing and detailed account of life in Germany under Hitler during the second world war. As Klemperer often emphasises in his entries, the mere act of keeping a diary was in itself an act of great bravery. Klemperer never forgot the risk he was putting his wife and friend Anne-Marie (who stored his notes) under either. Klemperer watched friends disappear one-by-one to Aushwitz and all the time feared it would be his turn next. This book was a pleasure to read and is testament to the spirit and bravery of the man.