I Will Bear Witness: 1942-1945

I Will Bear Witness: 1942-1945 PDF Author: Victor Klemperer
Publisher: Random House (NY)
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 584

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Book Description
"The best written, most evocative, most observant record of daily life in the Third Reich." -Amos Elon, "The New York Times Victor Klemperer risked his life to preserve these diaries so that he could, as he wrote, "bear witness" to the gathering hor-ror of the Nazi regime. The son of a Berlin rabbi, Klemperer was a German patriot who served with honor during the First World War, married a gentile, and converted to Protestantism. He was a professor of Romance languages at the Dresden Technical Institute, a fine scholar and writer, and an intellectual of a somewhat conservative disposition. Unlike many of his Jewish friends and academic colleagues, he feared Hitler from the start, and though he felt little allegiance to any religion, under Nazi law he was a Jew. In the years 1933 to 1941, covered in the first volume of these diaries, Klemperer's life is not yet in danger, but he loses his professorship, his house, even his typewriter; he is not allowed to drive, and since Jews are forbidden to own pets, he must put his cat to death. Because of his military record and marriage to a "full-blooded Aryan," he is spared deportation, but nevertheless, Klemperer has to wear the yellow Jewish star, and he and his wife, Eva, are subjected to the ever-increasing escalation of Nazi tyranny. The distinguished historian Peter Gay, in The New York Times Book Review, wrote that Klemperer's "personal history of how the Third Reich month by month, sometimes week by week, accelerated its crusade against the Jews gives as accurate a picture of Nazi trickery and brutality as we are likely to have...a report from the interior that tells the horrifying story of the evolving Nazi persecution...witha concrete, vivid power that is, and I think will remain, unsurpassed." This volume begins in 1942, the year of the Final Solution, and ends in 1945, with the devastation of Hitler's Germany. Rumors of the death camps soon reach the Jews of Dresden, now jammed into their so-called Jews' houses, starved, humiliated, subject day and night to Gestapo raids, and terrified as, one by one, their neighbors are taken away. Klemperer is made to shovel snow, is assigned to do forced labor in a factory, is taunted on the streets by gangs of boys, but his life is spared, thanks to the privileged status of Jews married to Aryans. In the final days of the war, however, even Jews in mixed marriages are summoned to report for transport to "labor camps," which Klemperer now knows means death, and that his turn will soon come. He is saved by the great Dresden air raid of February 13, 1945; he and his wife survive the fiery destruction of their city and make their way to the Allied lines. "In the enthralling and appalling final pages of this miraculous work," wrote Niall Ferguson in the London Sunday Telegraph, "Klemperer all too soon encounters the deliberate amnesia of the defeated Germany: 'What is "Gestapo"?' declares a Breslau woman he encounters in May 1945. 'I've never heard the word. I've never been interested in politics, I don't know anything about the persecution of the Jews.'" Says Ferguson, "Of all the books I have read on this subject, I find it hard to think of one which has taught me more."

I Will Bear Witness: 1942-1945

I Will Bear Witness: 1942-1945 PDF Author: Victor Klemperer
Publisher: Random House (NY)
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 584

Get Book Here

Book Description
"The best written, most evocative, most observant record of daily life in the Third Reich." -Amos Elon, "The New York Times Victor Klemperer risked his life to preserve these diaries so that he could, as he wrote, "bear witness" to the gathering hor-ror of the Nazi regime. The son of a Berlin rabbi, Klemperer was a German patriot who served with honor during the First World War, married a gentile, and converted to Protestantism. He was a professor of Romance languages at the Dresden Technical Institute, a fine scholar and writer, and an intellectual of a somewhat conservative disposition. Unlike many of his Jewish friends and academic colleagues, he feared Hitler from the start, and though he felt little allegiance to any religion, under Nazi law he was a Jew. In the years 1933 to 1941, covered in the first volume of these diaries, Klemperer's life is not yet in danger, but he loses his professorship, his house, even his typewriter; he is not allowed to drive, and since Jews are forbidden to own pets, he must put his cat to death. Because of his military record and marriage to a "full-blooded Aryan," he is spared deportation, but nevertheless, Klemperer has to wear the yellow Jewish star, and he and his wife, Eva, are subjected to the ever-increasing escalation of Nazi tyranny. The distinguished historian Peter Gay, in The New York Times Book Review, wrote that Klemperer's "personal history of how the Third Reich month by month, sometimes week by week, accelerated its crusade against the Jews gives as accurate a picture of Nazi trickery and brutality as we are likely to have...a report from the interior that tells the horrifying story of the evolving Nazi persecution...witha concrete, vivid power that is, and I think will remain, unsurpassed." This volume begins in 1942, the year of the Final Solution, and ends in 1945, with the devastation of Hitler's Germany. Rumors of the death camps soon reach the Jews of Dresden, now jammed into their so-called Jews' houses, starved, humiliated, subject day and night to Gestapo raids, and terrified as, one by one, their neighbors are taken away. Klemperer is made to shovel snow, is assigned to do forced labor in a factory, is taunted on the streets by gangs of boys, but his life is spared, thanks to the privileged status of Jews married to Aryans. In the final days of the war, however, even Jews in mixed marriages are summoned to report for transport to "labor camps," which Klemperer now knows means death, and that his turn will soon come. He is saved by the great Dresden air raid of February 13, 1945; he and his wife survive the fiery destruction of their city and make their way to the Allied lines. "In the enthralling and appalling final pages of this miraculous work," wrote Niall Ferguson in the London Sunday Telegraph, "Klemperer all too soon encounters the deliberate amnesia of the defeated Germany: 'What is "Gestapo"?' declares a Breslau woman he encounters in May 1945. 'I've never heard the word. I've never been interested in politics, I don't know anything about the persecution of the Jews.'" Says Ferguson, "Of all the books I have read on this subject, I find it hard to think of one which has taught me more."

Language of the Third Reich

Language of the Third Reich PDF Author: Victor Klemperer
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826491308
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Victor Klemperer was Professor of French Literature at Dresden University. As a Jew, he was removed from his post in 1935, only surviving thanks to his marriage to an Aryan. Presenting a study of language and its engagement with history, this book draws form Klemperer's conviction that the language of the Third Reich helped to create its culture.

I Will Bear Witness, Volume 2

I Will Bear Witness, Volume 2 PDF Author: Victor Klemperer
Publisher: Modern Library
ISBN: 0399589082
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
Destined to take its place alongside The Diary of Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel's Night as one of the great classics of the Holocaust, I Will Bear Witness is a timeless work of literature, the most eloquent and acute testament to have emerged from Hitler's Germany. Volume Two begins in 1942, the year the Final Solution was formally proposed, and carries us through to the Allied bombing of Dresden and Germany's defeat.

The Diaries of Victor Klemperer 1933-1945

The Diaries of Victor Klemperer 1933-1945 PDF Author: Victor Klemperer
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 9781842120224
Category : Germany
Languages : en
Pages : 1043

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Book Description
A publishing sensation in Germany (where they have sold over 100,000 copies at 45), the publication of Victor Klemperer's diaries brings to light one of the most extraordinary documents of the Nazi period. The son of a rabbi, Klemperer was by 1933 a professor of languages in Dresden. Over the next decade he, like other German Jews, lost his job, his house and many of his friends, even his cat, as Jews were not allowed to own pets. Throughout, he, like so many other German Jews, remained loyal to his country, determined not to emigrate, and convinced that each successive Nazi act against the Jews must be the last. Saved for much of the war from the Holocaust by his marriage to a gentile, he was able to escape in the aftermath of the Allied bombing of Dresden and survived the remaining months of the war in hiding. Throughout, Klemperer kept a diary, for a Jew in Nazi Germany a daring act ion itself. Shocking and moving by turns, it is a remarkable and important document, as powerful and astonishing in its way as Anne Frank's classic.This edition combines both volumes of his diaries, together forming the complete set. They cover the period from Hitler's election to the beginnings of the Holocaust, to the end of the war. They tell the story of Klemperer's increasing isolation, his near miraculous survival, his awareness of the development of the growing Holocaust as friends and associates disappeared, and his narrow escapes from deportation and the Dresden firebombing in 1945.

My Opposition

My Opposition PDF Author: Friedrich Kellner
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108307841
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Book Description
This is a truly unique account of Nazi Germany at war and of one man's struggle against totalitarianism. A mid-level official in a provincial town, Friedrich Kellner kept a secret diary from 1939 to 1945, risking his life to record Germany's path to dictatorship and genocide and to protest his countrymen's complicity in the regime's brutalities. Just one month into the war he is aware that Jews are marked for extermination and later records how soldiers on leave spoke openly about the mass murder of Jews and the murder of POWs; he also documents the Gestapo's merciless rule at home from euthanasia campaigns against the handicapped and mentally ill to the execution of anyone found listening to foreign broadcasts. This essential testimony of everyday life under the Third Reich is accompanied by a foreword by Alan Steinweis and the remarkable story of how the diary was brought to light by Robert Scott Kellner, Friedrich's grandson.

The Lesser Evil

The Lesser Evil PDF Author: Victor Klemperer
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1780226772
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The superb, bestselling diaries of Victor Klemperer, a Jew in Dresden who survived the war - hailed as one of the 20th century's most important chronicles. 'Compulsive reading' LITERARY REVIEW 'Deeply engrossing' SPECTATOR 'Klemperer's diary deserves to rank alongside that of Anne Frank' SUNDAY TIMES 'A vivid and powerful account of a remarkable life' SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY June 1945. The immediate postwar period produces many shocks and revelations - some people have behaved better than Klemperer had believed, others much worse. His sharp observations are now turned on the East German Communist Party, which he himself joins, and he notes many similarities between Nazi and Communist behaviour. Politics, he comes to believe, is above all the choice of the "lesser evil". He serves in the GDR's People's Chamber and represents East German scholarship abroad. But it is the details of everyday life, and the honesty and directness, that make these bestselling diaries so fascinating.

Art and the Nazis, 1933-1945

Art and the Nazis, 1933-1945 PDF Author: Arthur J. McLaughlin, Jr.
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476644837
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
This first comprehensive analysis of the Third Reich's efforts to confiscate, loot, censor and influence art begins with a brief history of the looting of artworks in Western history. The artistic backgrounds of Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goring are examined, along with the various Nazi art looting organizations, and Nazi endeavors to both censor and manipulate the arts for propaganda purposes. Long-held beliefs about the Nazi destruction of "degenerate art" are examined, drawing on recently developed university databases, new translations of original documents and recently discovered information. Theft and destruction of artworks by the Allies and looting by Soviet trophy brigades are also documented.

Munich 1919

Munich 1919 PDF Author: Victor Klemperer
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509510621
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Munich 1919 is a vivid portrayal of the chaos that followed World War I and the collapse of the Munich Council Republic by one of the most perceptive chroniclers of German history. Victor Klemperer provides a moving and thrilling account of what turned out to be a decisive turning point in the fate of a nation, for the revolution of 1918-9 not only produced the first German democracy, it also heralded the horrors to come. With the directness of an educated and independent young man, Klemperer turned his hand to political journalism, writing astute, clever and linguistically brilliant reports in the beleaguered Munich of 1919. He sketched intimate portraits of the people of the hour, including Erich Mühsam, Max Levien and Kurt Eisner, and took the measure of the events around him with a keen eye. These observations are made ever more poignant by the inclusion of passages from his later memoirs. In the midst of increasing persecution under the Nazis he reflected on the fateful year 1919, the growing threat of antisemitism, and the acquaintances he made in the period, some of whom would later abandon him, while others remained loyal. Klemperer's account once again reveals him to be a fearless and deeply humane recorder of German history. Munich 1919 will be essential reading for all those interested in 20th century history, constituting a unique witness to events of the period.

Bloom and Bust

Bloom and Bust PDF Author: Gwyneth Cliver
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 178238491X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
More than two decades of deconstruction, renovation, and reconstruction have left the urban environments in the former German Democratic Republic completely transformed. This volume considers the changing urban landscapes in the former East — and how the filling of previous absences and the absence of previous presence — creates the cultural landscape of modern unified Germany. This broadens our understanding of this transformation by examining often-neglected cities, spaces, or structures, and historical narration and preservation.

Diary of a Man in Despair

Diary of a Man in Despair PDF Author: Friedrich Reck
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590175867
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Hailed as one of the most important works on the Hitler period, this is an “astonishing, compelling, and unnerving” portrait of life in Nazi Germany between 1936 and 1944—from a man who nearly shot Hitler himself (The New Yorker) Friedrich Reck might seem an unlikely rebel against Nazism. Not just a conservative but a rock-ribbed reactionary, he played the part of a landed gentleman, deplored democracy, and rejected the modern world outright. To Reck, the Nazis were ruthless revolutionaries in Gothic drag, and helpless as he was to counter the spell they had cast on the German people, he felt compelled to record the corruptions of their rule. The result is less a diary than a sequence of stark and astonishing snapshots of life in Germany between 1936 and 1944. We see the Nazis at the peak of power, and the murderous panic with which they respond to approaching defeat; their travesty of traditional folkways in the name of the Volk; and the author’s own missed opportunity to shoot Hitler. This riveting book is not only, as Hannah Arendt proclaimed it, “one of the most important documents of the Hitler period,” but a moving testament of a decent man struggling to do the right thing in a depraved world.