I found this author to be so frustrating for the first 3/4 of this book

Heartbreaking and essential book | I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941 (Modern Library Paperbacks) | Victor Klemperer

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	• I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941 (Modern Library Paperbacks) Victor Klemperer Modern Library, 1999 - 544 pages average customer review:based on 48 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Who can doubt it?

When my son told me a student said the Holocaust was much less gruesome than reported and was exagerated by people over the years, we started to read this together... Not that he needed to be reminded, but how incredible that even today some are still floating this insane rumor!

I found this author to be so frustrating for the first 3/4 of this book

Victor Klemperer, the author, was the son of an Orthodox rabbi, who later became a Reform rabbi. Victor and several of his siblings converted to Christianity as young adults. In his 20s, Victor married Eva, a Christian by birth. Even though both were avowed Christians, under the Nazi Nueremburg Laws, Victor was considered a Jew. This first volume covers the time from Hitler's ascent in power until 1941. He was a teacher of Romance Literature (he particularly loved 18th century French lit) , a professor, at the Technical University (Hochschule, which is actually a post-secondary school level in Germany) in Dresden. Eva had studied the piano and gave up a career in music. Klemperer's series of diaries are the only known diaries kept by a Jew living in Germany from Hitler's rise to after Hitler's death, so these are indeed an interesting and unique set of volumes. There is even a third volume, The Lesser Evil, covering post WWII Germany from 1945-1959. Klemperer was a very loving and doting husband to Eva, and an all around nice guy. Now, indulge me, I have to be quite shallow. For nearly 3/4 of the book, this man drove me nuts. His poor choices, his stubbornness, his failure to read the handwriting on the wall, and his flimsy excuses for his actions once he could not help but read the handwriting on the wall, drove me to distraction. The current events took second place to Klemperer's maddening rationale. For instance, when most of Klemperer's family was scrambling to leave Germany, from 1933-35, Klemperer would say, "Why should I leave my Fatherland? Germany is my country. I'm a German. It's the Nazis who are ungerman." "Where in the world would I go? What would I do?" Repeatedly, his siblings and other friends would urge Victor and Eva to leave before it was too late, but he'd always have the same response. Victor and Eva owned some land in a town on the outskirts of Dresden. they wanted to build a house there, and for several years they tried to get a mortgage, but couldn't. Not because he was a financial risk, but because he was a Jew, according to Nazi law. That should have been a big clue, right? First of all, he was no longer a Jew, second of all, why should he be denied a mortgage because of Hitler's race laws? But, no, Klemperer was determined to somehow obtain the money, even though things were getting progressively worse for the Jews and even though the populace would be leading them to war several years in the future. While waiting to obtain a mortgage, they would buy trees, shrubbery and plants for their property. They were finally able to obtain a loan from an acquaintance, who had her account blocked by the government as she emigrated Germany. (Again, a very big clue, with Victor still blustering, "But why should I leave Germany? This is my country!" ) Around the time they got the money to start on a very scaled-back version of their house, Victor got fired simply because he was a Jew. His salary went from800M per month, to only 400M...and even less, because they took a big chunk out for taxes in advance. Also during this time,Victor, and especially Eva, were having severe dental problems. Again and again they'd have to go; 600M for this treatment, 600M for that. This was a pair who basically lived from payday to payday anyway, a further reason why they didn't try very hard to leave. Once Eva had to return to the dentist because she had been burned by the arsenic in the previous treatment (!). So now the house is finally being built, the dental work is being taken care of, and poor Klemperer obssesses every week on how in the world he is ever going to have the money to "pay the Indus"..pay up his life insurance policy, which is coming due. This becomes his biggest worry. Day after day, he worries. His big brother, Georg sends him 6,000M, and Yipppeee! They decide to enlarge the house...and add terraced walls, and an iron gate, oh, they'll pay this Indus, and suddenly, at age 53, Victor decides to go to driving school and learn to drive. Of course, it too costs money, and he has to take the course twice,because he's not such a good driver. And why learn to drive unless you get a car? He can't afford to buy a really good car, and knows nothing about them; don't worry. He takes the lemon to a mechanic after he's bought it!! (Why not take the mechanic with you, Victor?) Klemperer is amazed at how much a car costs to run: the gas, the tune-ups, the tires, insurance and oh, yeah, all those dents he gets in the bumpers, because he can't see well. Every few months Klemperer worries about the Indus, and miraculously, a little money appears, and they decide to enlarge the house on credit (!), pay the Indus, get more dental work done... Finally, he stops driving me crazy, and I begin to admire him. He is committed to writing a literature book focusing mainly on 18th century French lit. He has already committed himself to writing his diary about everyday life in the Third Reich. Then amid all the fetid swirl of propaganda, he decides to write a book on the phrases used by the Nazis in the Third Reich.
His enthusiasm and dedication are impressive and endearing. I'm sure it's what helped keep him alive and sane. Towards the end of this volume, when the Nazis are now at war, Klemperer lets slip that "Muschel" the cat, "Muschel is a meat-eater." Sometimes meat is hard to find even with coupons, and sometimes Muschel gets a week's ration of meat, meant for both Victor and Eva. Endearing, but quite harebrained. In volume 2, he makes far more intelligent decisions, and both are very admirable. It's hard to see how they were ever able to pull through, especially when you consider he was born in 1881.

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Heartbreaking and essential book

A must read for all those who are compelled to understand the insanity of Nazi Germany. The evil is in the details as these journals so devastatingly reveal. Sometimes necessary to read only a few pages at a time as the devastation and slowly increasing helplessness of this man's life is revealed. A critical historical document.

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interesting

It is a diary so some of it is boring. However, the last 2 years show how severe life was even for the Jews not sent to concentration camps.

Bearing Witness as a Jew in Nazi Germany

As an educated Professor of Philology, Victor Klemperer documents life as a Jew in Nazi Germany. The very act of keeping this diary was grounds for his demise.
The essence of these incredible documents, is that it records the tightening of control of the Jewish people under Nazism. The progressive pogroms took away simple things such as going to a movie or taking a ride on a tram. The taking of one's own home and living in a communal Jewish home further degraded the Jewish people. The simple fact that each had to wear the yellow star which indeed put all Jews into harms way.
Mr Klemperer was forced out of his professorship because he was a Jew. Even though he was an honorable World War I Veteran, he was forced to live on a half pension.
The only thing that saved Victor Klemperer was his Aryan wife Eva. She never abandoned Victor as I'm sure other wives in similar circumstances did. Looking at this, I think is an incredible act of love by Eva. Her subjucation to Nazi Life living with a Jew for 12 years was indeed a severe prison term.
The diaries are edited to delete repetition. However several things are constantly repeated. Victor was always at death's door with an ailing heart. The other repetition was he and his wife's constant physical hunger.
This set of diaries should be required reading for anyone who is a serious student of 20th century history.

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March 10, 1933--"January 30: Hitler Chancellor. What, up to election, I called terror, was a mild prelude. On Saturday I heard a part of Hitler's speech from Königsberg. The front of a hotel at the railway station, illuminated, a torchlight procession. . . . I understood only occasional words. But the tone! The unctuous bawling, truly bawling, of a priest." Struggling to complete his ambitious history of eighteenth-century France, Victor Klemperer loses his professorship, then his car, his phone, his house, even his typewriter, under the ever-tightening Nazi grip. Not since the diary of Anne Frank has a secret journal burst onto the scene with such mesmerizing urgency. I Will Bear Witness is a testament of rare eloquence and humanity by the most astute witness ever to emerge from Hitler's Germany. It is a work of literature as well as a revelation of the day-by-day terror of the Nazi years.

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