Rating: 
Summary: early reviews of the English edition
Review: "Klemperer's diary is like a painting by Peter Brueghel. We marvel at the depth of his depiction... These diaries are certain to become not only the main primary source for historians of the Nazi period, but also an essential read for anyone who wishes to understand what it was like to be a Jew living in Germany in the 1930s... But read this wonderful book and judge for yourself." -- Philip Kerr, The Sunday Times"Why the excitement? Because Klemperer is a special case... The life, the survival against the odds, the fixed viewpoint -- all this is exceptional. But not even that makes for success. It is indeed Klemperer's particular gifts which are decisive... Klemperer's determination to record with unwavering honesty never flags. And he was there, day in, day out, from start to finish." -- Philip Brady, The Guardian "It is not the horror of the Holocaust we see here, but the subtle, barely discernible corruption of daily life, as the regime's cocktail of economic recovery, coercion and propaganda poisons the minds and perverts the conduct of ordinary Germans... Few English readers will fail to be moved, as I was -- ultimately to the point of tears." -- Niall Ferguson, The Sunday Telegraph "The best written, most evocative, most observant record of daily life in the Third Reich." -- Amos Elon, The New York Times This extraordinary book describes in detail, and with unparalleled force and clarity, what it was like to live in Germany under Nazism." -- David Price-Jones, Financial Times "Victor Klemperer's eye-witness chronicle, not dissimilar in its cumulative power to Primo Levi's, is a devastating account of man's inhumanity to man... a momentous work." -- The Literary Review "Klemperer's diary is a rich tapestry of his time... by far the most readable document of [life in] Nazi Germany." -- Daniel Johnson, The Times
Rating: 
Summary: Marvellous book
Review: A day to day account on what happened in Germany. Allows to understand politics and politicians of the period between both wars. I suppose it is going to become a classic as Anna Franks Diary or Samuel Pepys.
Rating:
Summary: An extraordinary work
Review: A must read. It can however, be a difficult read. Certain passages seem to drag on about mundane topics and can lose your interest. The fact that the soft cover volume has tiny print does not help.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: A must read. It can however, be a difficult read. Certain passages seem to drag on about mundane topics and can lose your interest. The fact that the soft cover volume has tiny print does not help.
Rating: 
Summary: "should be shelved next to anne frank?!!!"
Review: An avid reader of holocaust literature and memoirs since the tender age of ten, and having grandparents that survived this two part memoir looked good. When I read the back one of the comments was that it "should be shelved next to Anne Frank".
I don't think I entirely agree with that, the first book which is his diary entries from 1933 to 1941, starts out be very dry, and doesn't really get too interesting till the last hundred pages or so. The second book was a bit more interesting, but like the first it lacked the luster that make other memoirs shine. I have heard that ir is much better in German, how this is I do not know.In my opinion, I think you should save your money and buy the memoir of Miep Gies, the Frank family's keeper.
Rating:
Summary: A Gripping First-Hand View of Nazi Germany
Review: As a historian and teacher, I've read extensively about the Holocaust. Never before however have I come across such a riveting accounting of the horrors of Nazi Germany. Walter Klemperer, a learned professor of literature, uses his journal to analytically examine the increasing restrictions placed on Jews, and himself, a practicing Christian of Jewish origins. His diary affords the reader a compelling look into everyday life in Germany. Though he is affected by anti-Semitic decrees, his observations are grounded more upon his views as a German. That is what makes this diary such a valuable reading experience -- his views, are that of an everyday German, albeit a proclaimed Jew. His intense disgust with the Nazi rule stems equally from his horror with what it does to Germany as much as what it does to him personally. The mounting tension he and his wife encounter as their lives become increasingly difficult is both heartbreaking and spell-binding. The reader is introduced into the Klemperer world, including the people who populate it, as well as the inner musings of the author, who faces the torments of the times with all too real human reactions. His doubts, fears, insecurities, and triumphs come to light brilliantly in this diary. As you discover Klemperer's world, you'll not soon forget it. This book has had a tremendous impact upon my understanding of this time period and has caused me to rethink many of my views of it. Any serious student of the era, or even those people who have a casual interest in the subject will find this diary to be one of the most rewarding reading experiences of the year! Don't miss it!
Rating:
Summary: A Jewish Past in Nazi Germany
Review: As a Jewish American born after World War 2 with no knowledge of any family members who lived in Europe during the holocaust I have nonetheless always been fascinated with those times. As a college student I worked in a resort hotel where I met German Jewish survivors. To this day what struck me most was what one such survivor told me when I asked him what he remembered of his childhood in Germany. He told me it was just like being in America. German cities were modernized. Jewish people participated in civic life with small attention paid to their heritage unless they wished otherwise. Victor Klemperer's book "I Will Bear Witness," underscores what I had been told by that survivor. Life in Germany before January, 1933 was not, for Jews, particularly distinguishable from life for non-Jews. In fact, one might argue that the kinds of insidious prejudice rampant in the United States in the first half of this century were more virulent than that experienced in pre-Nazi Germany. The beauty of this book is how Professor Klemperer bears witness to the slow but relentless descent into hell by people who did not perceive themselves different from their countrymen. His descriptions of the day to day activities of paying taxes, arguing with the bureacracy over one's pension, and seeking out rationed foods bring to life the experience of those times. I must admit that I, like most Jewish Americans of my generation, view a Jewish person professing Protestantism somewhat uncharitably. And yet, the professor's consistent adherance to a world view in which one's ethnic background does not determine one's fate is quite palatable. Yet the fatal attraction of German culture, in this case, becomes the downfall of many German Jewish citizen. Perhaps we learn through this book and others like it that powerful forces of demagoguery once unleased may render even the most apparently "enlightened" society into a middle ages horror.
Rating:
Summary: Ordinary prejudices of a professor make Klemperer human
Review: As an Irishman who lived in Germany for three years and really enjoyed getting my teeth into their rich and juicy language, I found the story of Viktor Klemperer's struggle to stay afloat in the 1930's as a Jew very familiar. There are many places in this world where people feel as he did, at least while the humiliations and restrictions were still not life-threatening, and that is why many would find such a diary interesting. Women in the Third Reich, too, could have written about being fired from respectable positions and sent back to "kirche, kuche und kindern". What makes the story very authentic are his very stereotypical views of women, or "little people" (workers, etc.), and his own gravitation towards fellow Jews. This makes him much more real - fussy, getting older, losing his courage and endurance, dealing with his wife Eva's illness, driven mad by doing "housemaid's work" which Eva, unemployed, cannot seem to do. The stove needs coal, and it's always dirty. They have a summer cottage in Doelschen, and they are trying to do the work themselves, getting there by expensive taxi, with Eva driven bonkers by the neighbors there around them so much further progressed in their cottage building. HE is perpetually strapped to pay his bills, has to give up his life insurance policy, but carries on with the extreme expense of running a used car, delighting in using the new 7.5-km autobahn near Dresden, a road for the Fuhrer! They do not give up the cottage or the car when he is suspended from the university. All the petty and not-so-petty sums which plague this older couple (toilet paper, for example, and cigarettes) are recounted in numerical detail. That is what makes the story so interesting, and so real. I do wonder that there are not more diaries kept, as the German people are extremely literary, introspective, with scrivener tendencies. In particular he is under threat as a Jew, regardless of renouncing it as a religion. But no matter if he had been an Aryan, his impatience with others, and the annoyances of life, come through almost daily. I compare him to my own much more stoical father, who wouldn't bother (after living through the Depression) to complain about such insignificant slights, at least in the beginning. Yet, and yet! It is in his extreme sensitivity to words, innuendoes, context, based on his being a Jew and outsider, that makes his observations so exact, nor does he hide his view that others are often beneath him. Like another reviewer here, I too wondered about his wife Eva, often ill, other times out there gardening for 8 hours, who'd been a professional violinist, and who does not seem to work or be involved in these money matters, much in contrast to most married people I've ever known. In big German cities at that time, most women were working, esp. in offices and factories. It was a very modern and bustling time. My suspicion is that Eva had a form of neurological disease, such as MS, which affects eyes, muscle strength, balance, and mental state. It comes and goes without warning, which could explain why she was so often "ill"; other times going gungho on the summer house. A real job may have been too much.He writes very well, very openly, and very honestly, so that any reader could find this interesting. As a male professor, he had status in old Germany; as a Jew, he began to suffer an untermensch status, as some of the servants and Arbeiters seemed to be in his estimation. He may not have been the nicest of men, yet his clarity and honesty is a graphic account of totalitarianism creeping up and choking its people, much as happened in Communist countries.
Rating:
Summary: Klemperer's "Diary" is great literature at it's best!
Review: Discovering Victor Klemperer's "Diary" is like finding the missing link. It helps to fill in the gaps in our understanding of the German society that became crazy and the Jewish victims who experienced it. Volume I of the Diary, written and edited in journalistic style, gives a dramatic account of the day to day life of a Jewish Professor during the Hitler years. It reveals an all too human, noble, but flawed, character who undergoes dramatic development as the story progresses. The backdrop of historical events turns the Diary into a page-turning thriller. If we consider this true story to be a novel, we can identify with the protagonist, caught in the plot of history; it is great literature at it's best. As documented history, it gives invaluable insight into the holocaust. Every intelligent person will want read it.
Rating:
Summary: Klemperer's "Diary" is great literature at it's best!
Review: Discovering Victor Klemperer's "Diary" is like finding the missing link. It helps to fill in the gaps in our understanding of the German society that became crazy and the Jewish victims who experienced it. Volume I of the Diary, written and edited in journalistic style, gives a dramatic account of the day to day life of a Jewish Professor during the Hitler years. It reveals an all too human, noble, but flawed, character who undergoes dramatic development as the story progresses. The backdrop of historical events turns the Diary into a page-turning thriller. If we consider this true story to be a novel, we can identify with the protagonist, caught in the plot of history; it is great literature at it's best. As documented history, it gives invaluable insight into the holocaust. Every intelligent person will want read it.
|
