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Title: I Will Bear Witness : A Diary of the Nazi Years1942-1945 by Victor Klemperer ISBN: 0-375-75697-3 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 03 April, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.81 (21 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Read His Witness.
Comment: 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.
Rating: 5
Summary: If You Have Ears, Listen
Comment: 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.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Ten-Star Collection
Comment: Volume I and this volume of Victor Klemperer's diaries as well as "The Language of the Third Reich" ("LTI") comprise the most extraordinary view of Hitler's Germany so far published. Not only are these books superbly written by an educated and perceptive man and expertly translated, they offer the most complete and engaging view ever presented of life in Nazi Germany. Born a Jew, Klemperer was a converted Christian, married to an Aryan, an anti-Zionist, and a German through and through. He also served with distinction in WWI. None of this made much difference to the Gestapo but nevertheless the Klemperers survived all 12 years of the Third Reich without being sent to a death camp, the humiliations (confiscation of car, home, pets, even Klemperer's WWI rifle bayonet!), the shortages of food and clothing, the forced manual labor. Through Klemperer's eyes we see clearly and with amazing detail and insight how the Nazis strangled initiative and freedom in Germany between 1933-1945, not only for Jews but Germans as well. We also see that anti-Semitism was not as widely spread in Germany as we might have previously believed, at least not in Dresden, where the Klemperers spent most of these horrible 12 years. It is also significant that neither Klemperer nor any of the other Jews in Dresden were aware during the war of the precise extent of the Holocaust, although they all knew that being sent to a concentration camp meant eventual death. My only criticism of these diaries is they could have used some maps of the local area and the notes should've been put at the bottom of the pages instead of at the end of the books, arranged by date. Thus it is sometimes very easy to miss the significance of certain entries. These books are required reading for anyone seriously interested in the history of Nazi Germany.
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Title: The Language of the Third Reich: Lti - Lingua Tertii Imperii: A Philologist's Notebook by Victor Klemperer, Martin Brady ISBN: 0826457770 Publisher: Continuum Pub. Date: July, 2002 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the Ss Kommandant at Auschwitz by Rudolf Hoss, Steven Paskuly, Andrew Pollinger, Primo Levi, Rudolph Hoss ISBN: 0306806983 Publisher: DaCapo Press Pub. Date: May, 1996 List Price(USD): $18.50 |
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Title: Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Christopher R. Browning ISBN: 0060995068 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 17 March, 1993 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Defying Hitler: A Memoir by Sebastian Haffner, Oliver Pretzel ISBN: 0374161577 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 14 August, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: The Man Who Would Be King, and Other Stories by Rudyard Kipling, Louis L. Cornell ISBN: 0192836293 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: April, 1999 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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