Rating: 
Summary: The paperback version
Review: Do not buy the paperback version if you have any significant visual difficulties. The publisher has shamelessly used such light type and a miniscule typestyle that it's an absolutely excruciating task to read..
Rating:
Summary: Incredible, moving account!
Review: I could not put this book down! The reader is drawn into the horrible Nazi atrocities and yet the author keeps his perspective fresh and clear. Every holocaust account is a mortal tragedy but this one ranks high on the scale and should be required reading for students the world over. A beautiful, touching, and heart-breaking account!
Rating:
Summary: Incredible, moving account!
Review: I could not put this book down! The reader is drawn into the horrible Nazi atrocities and yet the author keeps his perspective fresh and clear. Every holocaust account is a mortal tragedy but this one ranks high on the scale and should be required reading for students the world over. A beautiful, touching, and heart-breaking account!
Rating:
Summary: Exciting, authentic, instructive - and immensely readable
Review: I devoured the roughly 1500 pages of Victor Klemperer's diary in the German original in four consecutive days and nights. What grips one is the question how Klemperer, an identifiable Jew, could have survived the Third Reich in the face of the horrendous persecution of the Jews which his detailed diary shows closing in on him from all sides, and still be alive at the end of the Second World War viz the second volume of the book.What saved him was numerous favorable coincidents; so numerous indeed that they would appear improbabale in a work of fiction. On some occasions, his marriage to a Christian wife, a concert violinist, worked in his favor; on others, the courage of friends of the family, like the lady dentist, who, among other services, dared to hide Klemperer's completed diary pages in her home - despite the danger of Gestapo raids - and thus saved this document for posterity; at other points the leniency of an official helped (Klemperer's World-War-I-medal for bravery, or his renown as a Professor of Romance Philology tended to summon respect). Klemperer first suffered the pressures put on Jews in Nazi Germany to leave the country (that was the policy before The Second World War); roughly half of the German Jews did leave, but not Klemperer, who remained in his hometown, Dresden, because he could imagine no future for himself as a professer of Romance philology outside of Germany. Of course, the future stopped for him inside the country as well. Humiliations for Jews went from bad to worse as the War went on. Jews e.g. were no longer permitted to use a seat when they rode in a tram; they had to stand on the platform. On one occasion, when Klemperer was there, the tramdriver addressed him in a sympathetic fashion talk to openly in this moronic madness of a War." Since Jews were not permitted to use bomb shelters, the Klemperers were separated on the night of the worst air raid on Dresden in February 1945, because his wife got pulled into a shelter that he mustn't enter. By a near miracle the two found each other again at the border of the Elbe after the event, and his wife pulled the yellow star off him; he then survived the remainder of the war by posturing as an "Aryan" who lost all his identification I can tell you about the Third Reich, you won't be able to realize its real atmosphere. Life under that dictatorship is not transmittable by mere words." The sensation is that Klemperer's diaries do transmit that atmosphere, and in enormously precise words. The authenticity of the account arises from the peculiar perspective of a diarist, who, at any given point, possesses neither a privileged view of the future, nor easy hindsight-cleverness. An example is Klemperer's poignant account of the deportation of the Dresden Jews. Trembling he might be with the next transport, he was at pains to gather all available information, but with little success. The fate of the deported was strictly prohibited knowledge, and rumors were ineffectual in this era of universal mutual distrust. At first, he even ponders what to pack in a bag in the event of his own deportation. He slowly realizes that people who are carted off probably won't need bags, being definitely muted as they disappear; three years into the War he at last concludes that they probably all get killed. Auschwitz especially, he suspects, must be a slaughterhouse ("Schlachthaus"). But till the end of the war he does not learn to the millions, that some people are read out for immediate destruction at the trains' arrival ramps, that people are purposefully annihilated by forced labor and hunger, by medical experiments, and gassings, comes to him only after the War. Klemperer's portrayal of the non-Jewish Germans permits no easy generalizations. By at least as great a number of his German compatriots was he shown friendliness as unfriendliness. The behavior of the civilians was frequently tolerable, the chicanery and humiliations typically coming from the uniformed representatives of the Party, as the Gestapo. A group among the civilians that did show heinous behavior in toto was the Hitler Youth, into whom the fear and hatred of Jews was drilled unremittingly from the tenderest age by the Party Youth organization, which often caused rifts in families where no such fanaticism had originally ruled. This is certainly an account of history from which one can learn - important both for Germany in particular and for mankind in general, as a portrayal of human behavior under a terrible dictatorship, in which the varnish of human civilization cracked, and man stood revealed as the beast he can be. The book's instructive power lies in its precision; it is the most authentic book I ever read about the Third Reich. One maybe even more remarkable feature is Klemperer's immense readability. This diarist writes well, never even loses his humour and dares to joke in the face of mortal danger. I've no notion how he could have mastered such detachment, and nearly as great as my admiration for the subject matter presented in the book is that for the great style of its author
Rating: 
Summary: Worth the effort
Review: I found Klemperer's daily log style a little wearing, and often wished the trips to the dentist would be replaced by something more meaningful to the "Big Picture". That is not to say they shouldn't be there. As a student of German culture from the start of Hitler's political career, I read every detail about the day-to-day life under Nazi rule with anticipation. Occasionally my interest waned. Since I knew his experiences would culminate in the years of WWII, I kept at it. Like an earlier reviewer, the book ended before I got what I was after, and I anxiously await Vol. 2. I don't consider him "boring". You just have to chew through the less-dilectable skin, which is in itself appealing, to get to the sweetest part of the apple. As a side note, it was amusing to discover that Kurt Vonnegut's long-time claim to being the only one to benefit from the bombing of Dresden, was false.
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Summary: Powerful and riveting
Review: I have just finished reading this amazing account of life of a Jew (albeit a Protestant) living under Hitler. This is a great human interest story, damningly enlightening on what daily life was for a "lucky" Jew in Germany during the Nazi era. I will certainly read the second volume, covering the years 1942 to 1945, when it is published this year. In fact I would like to read all he wrote during the years he was forced not to be able to work from 1935, when he lost his professorship because he was a Jew, till 1945. This is a book that you will want to read.
Rating:
Summary: memoir of a shadow life
Review: I have read quite a number of memoirs in my fifty-seven years. I suppose, before I read Klemperer's journals, I thought most highly of Harold's Nicolson's diaries of the war years in Britain. But, Klemperer's story is even more in extremis than Nicolson's as he was a Jew (though married to a Gentile), noting daily, and with almost incredible courage, the gradual descent of his country into the abyss. Combined with his political awareness are his agonized reactions to the small pri-\ vations, such as a law forbidding Jews from owning house-pets, forbidding him the use of his car, etc. Everyone should read this book. I mean, everyone.
Rating:
Summary: memoir of a shadow life
Review: I have read quite a number of memoirs in my fifty-seven years. I suppose, before I read Klemperer's journals, I thought most highly of Harold's Nicolson's diaries of the war years in Britain. But, Klemperer's story is even more in extremis than Nicolson's as he was a Jew (though married to a Gentile), noting daily, and with almost incredible courage, the gradual descent of his country into the abyss. Combined with his political awareness are his agonized reactions to the small pri-\ vations, such as a law forbidding Jews from owning house-pets, forbidding him the use of his car, etc. Everyone should read this book. I mean, everyone.
Rating:
Summary: A fascinating document.
Review: I join the chorus of praise and esteem of other reviewers. It is a very important document. When this book is translated into Hebrew and published here, an ironic historical cycle will be closed and the tormented soul of our brother (or comrade) will rest in peace.
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Summary: KLEMPERER BRINGS TO LIFE NAZI HORRORS
Review: I was terrified by the world that Victor Klemperer brings to life in " I Will Bear Witness ". The diary is a day by day account of a slow descent into the bowels of Hell. In the beginning the reader is pulled into Klemperers mostly mundane day to day life. Klemperer was a well respected and much published professor of Romance Languages at the University of Dresden. As well he was a decorated veteran of World War I. Slowly, starting with Hitlers rise to power in 1933, his entire world is turned inside out. Day by day the situation becomes more strained. Year by year the situation becomes more dangerous. But the brave hearted Klemperers stay on in Germany because they are German and can imagine no other life. I was greatly moved by the scenes that were brought to life by Klemperer. The description of the first household search they were subjected to caused goose bumps to run up my spine. In addition, the narrative of his 8 day imprisonment ( cell 89 ) is in my opinion a classic that will belongs to the ages. His ability to to draw a picture and capture the mood of a situation was truly amazing. I cannot say enough about the courage of the Klemperers as they fought everyday to hold onto their dignity, pride and finally their lives. Thanks to the skill and courage of Professor Klemperer I now have, in some small way, an idea of what the day to day horror of Nazi Germany was like for the persecuted.
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