Rating: 
Summary: The book put you right there with Victor.
Review: If you like journals and diaries (and are a historical buff as well)you will be spell-bound by this book. Because there is so very much detail of Victor's day-to-day life, you are soon living with him as he documents his worries of money and losing the joys of his life - one by one -to the threshold of death. You dread what the next day will bring right along with him. It is a very human book showing all of Victor's foibles and irritating tendencies which are many. But you end up liking him anyway because he bears up under the horrors with spurts of courage and conviction and you know you could do no better, if as well. It is far too vivid in showing the truth of man's inhumanity to man to allow you to remain comfortable while reading it, but unlike many other books of that era, Victor's diaries are about the little things we live with and understand and constantly made me ask myself "would I have done the right thing in this or that circumstance." Because it is a two-part diary (the second half is just in the process of being published,I think), the worst was having it abruptly end! Having lived with Victor literally for so long I felt ripped apart from his life when the first book ended.
Rating: 
Summary: This book is unique, stark, and real.
Review: In a land where Jewish heritage was punishable by death, Klemperer miraculously documented his perspective. Truly an "eye of the storm" viewpoint. Truly unique.What is most compelling about this work is the level of personal detail. Volumes have been written documenting the atrocities of the Nazis. What we rarely get to see are these events from the perspective of the victim. Any book can explain historical events, but only a diary such as this can make it truly human. In contrast to Anne Frank, Klemperer did not hide. His WWI credentials provided leverage for him to remain in Dresden. This work is hypnotic and stark. It drew me in like no other personal account ever has. It is a necessary volume in any WWII library.
Rating:
Summary: Klemperer's book is unique in the literature of the holocuas
Review: Klemperer's book is unique in the literature of the Holocaust because it provides a day by day account the the major and minor indignities suffered under the Nazi dictatorship, and the reaction of ordinary Germans to them. The key insight that the book brought home for me was that many (but not enough) Germans did not lose their humanity when faced with the increasingly crushing weight of the Nazis on German Jews. In addition to his amazing luck, Klemperer's Christian friends helped make it possible, through scores of kindnesses, both small and large, for him to survive. He left an amazing historical document, and I look forward to reading the second volume. Larry Hohler
Rating:
Summary: One of history's greatest tragedies, but evil didn't prevail
Review: Klemperer's courage-and that of his wife and a tiny circle of confidants-and his almost superhuman endurance made possible the remarkable feat of keeping an almost daily diary during years of a starvation diet, Gestapo terror, persecution, exhausting physical labour, etc. Many media reviews refer to Klemperer's vivid description of the mechanics of Nazi persecution and criminality, which is indeed a compelling feature of the diaries, and an important testimony. But, more profoundly, Klemperer's diaries demonstrate that the Nazis emphatically failed in their attempt to dehumanise and destroy Klemperer. If anything, the somewhat unlikeable intellectual of the early diary is tempered into a figure of true greatness in the second volume--just as the persecution he endures reaches an almost fatal intensity. This is perhaps the key insight offered by Klemperer's diaries: they demonstrate that, while the Nazis did everything in their power to do so, they did not in fact rob Klemperer of his dignity, his inner dignity as a sensitive and ethical human being. Our century has tended to see victims of evil as largely passive and pathetic. We have forgotten that it is possible to die nobly. Klemperer's diaries remind us that the Jews, massacred by the millions, were not necessarily deprived of their humanity and dignity even as they were put to death. Photographs cannot testify to this, in fact they tend to convey the opposite impression. It is only the whispering of the soul on its way to meet its Maker which could testify to this. Klemperer's diaries are something similar. Some readers will take offense at a small fraction of Klemperer's opinions, chiefly his hostility to Zionism, which he saw as basically another race-based idealogy. This disagreement should not be allowed to become an obstacle to an understanding of the clear meaning of his diaries. Klemperer's diaries are magnificent and should be widely read, not just because of their vivid and detailed account of life during the Nazi years, but because they are proof that the bestial violence of the Nazis could not and did not deprive the Nazi's victims of their humanity; many millions died and are unable to affirm this; Klemperer lived and testifies to this truth on behalf of them all.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding personal view of historical madness
Review: Klemperer's diary provides an immediate, close-focus view of (in this volume) pre-war and (in the second) wartime Nazi Germany. He was a steady diarist, an intelligent, thinking man, and his dedication in maintaining his diary through months and years of deprivation and abuse was a profound gift to us all. After reading the facts concering Hitler's rise to power and its outcome, it is fascinating to see how these events were viewed by a German citizen and a Jew. Klemperer makes it clear that those with open eyes knew the evil of the Nazis from the first, so that claiming ignorance after the war is a poor excuse. On the other hand, he also shows how the Nazis consilidated their grip on power and played on the fears of the German people. I found it particularly interesting how successful the Nazis were at playing up the communist menace; how many times in Klemperer's diaries does someone state that the Nazis are tolerable because they are keeping out the communists, as though only those two choices were possible? It is the little tidbits such as this, the thoughts of the Germans, gentile and Jew, as they marched toward their doom, that makes Klemperer's diary so fascinating.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding personal view of historical madness
Review: Klemperer's diary provides an immediate, close-focus view of (in this volume) pre-war and (in the second) wartime Nazi Germany. He was a steady diarist, an intelligent, thinking man, and his dedication in maintaining his diary through months and years of deprivation and abuse was a profound gift to us all. After reading the facts concering Hitler's rise to power and its outcome, it is fascinating to see how these events were viewed by a German citizen and a Jew. Klemperer makes it clear that those with open eyes knew the evil of the Nazis from the first, so that claiming ignorance after the war is a poor excuse. On the other hand, he also shows how the Nazis consilidated their grip on power and played on the fears of the German people. I found it particularly interesting how successful the Nazis were at playing up the communist menace; how many times in Klemperer's diaries does someone state that the Nazis are tolerable because they are keeping out the communists, as though only those two choices were possible? It is the little tidbits such as this, the thoughts of the Germans, gentile and Jew, as they marched toward their doom, that makes Klemperer's diary so fascinating.
Rating:
Summary: A diamond in the sandbox of Holocaust literature.
Review: My review refers to the german original edition of the Klemperer diaries from 1933-1945. In the german edition, the diaries are not published in two parts. It must be hard for the english reader to stop 1941 and wait. Klemperer wrote more than 5000 typoscript pages of diary during the nazi period. The german original edition with many cutbacks has more than 1800 pages (1933-1945), the english translation about 500 (1933-1941), so I expect more cutbacks in the english version - most likely around Klemperers language studies about LTI-lingua tertii imperii, the language of the 3. Reich - more interesting for german native speakers. For the english reader, which had yet only read the diary until 1941 I will give the warning, that the 1942 diary is really the most depressing one. The Klemperer diary is definitely the best book I ever read about the nazi-time. (second one: Hans Fallada, 1947: "Jeder stirbt für sich allein" (Everybody dies for himself), English title: ?) As a German I grew up with an endless amount of information, literature, books, documentations, discussions and history school lessons about the 3. Reich, but the most refer only to long known facts and their problem is, that they are written with the look of the survivers, the next generation or the history view which sorts and interprets the facts with the knowledge of the ending. I believe, that nobody can understand the system, who has not read "first-hand" impressions. The Klemperer diary is, what I always was looking for: An uncommented inside view to the all day life in germany in that days and the evolution of the unthinkable. A first-hand information about the terrorism not in the concentration camps, but in "normal" life. Klemperer shows on nearly every page of his book, how many germans didn't follow Hitler's antisemitic view. He noticed the meanings, conversations, wishes, anxiety of the german population and always wondered about the opinion of the majority - is it pro or contra Hitler? He noticed the endless list of restrictions for the jews - simple and little things, which are forgotten and pressed to the background by the horror of the concentration camps, but new for us today. He noticed, how people divide in heroes and opportunists. By reading about the nazi-time we always ask ourself "What would I have done?" Would I had helped the people who needed me despite of the danger of loosing my own life, or would I had taken care only for my own security. It's hard to imagine, that someone can register, analyse und document all this on an unbelievable level of quantity and quality under the circumstances of starving, illness, pressure work und humiliation. He wrote not only a diary, he wrote high level literature - espessially his description "Zelle 89" about his 8-day prisonary on a level like "Schachnovelle" (Chess novell) from Arnold Zweig (highly recommended!). Around Victor Klemperer his (and the readers) friends are murdered or make suicide and he expects his own death every day but he wrote a real thriller like nobody else. We know, that he survived, but nearly everybody else, who was introduced to the reader didn't. A fiction thriller can not be a better page turner. After reading this diaries I decided to buy also his memories from 1881-1918 and the diaries from 1918-1932 to read how life was during World War I and how the republic turned to dictatorship and his diaries from 1945-1959, to read why he decided to stay in East-Germany and join the communist party - in contrast to his liberal political opinions. Together all four books must be the best inside view to german history during these important periods. The book is a memorial for all the nameless, who decided to be a hero (espessially Eva Klemperer) and for the six million, which would not have lost their life, if there had been more heroes. It brings us back a remembrance to at least a few of the six million precious human beings Europe lost forever and brings us back, that the nazis really killed a main part of the elite of european culture and society by killing the jews. Buy it and read it.
Rating:
Summary: A Moving, Frightening View of Everyday Life in Nazi Germany
Review: The most disarming and appealing feature of this tome is its slow and ineluctable building of suspense and empathy as World War I veteran Klemperer steadily weaves the day to day details of his life in 1930s Germany into a portrait of a rogue state moving irresistably down the path to tyranny and terror. The reader is sucked into the vortex of what it is like to live under such circumstances, where an aging Jewish professor who has built a life of purpose and meaning based on scholarship, hard work, and the belief in the rationalism of the state begins to understand that it will all unravel around him. You begin to experience how difficult and incomprehensible it must be for him, and empathize and worry for his fate as the building storm clouds of violent fascism fill the skies of 1930s Germany. As the days and weeks pass into months and years under the growing tyranny of National Socialism, Klemperer, married to an Aryan woman, increasingly finds solace and relief from the growing insanity swirling around him by concentrating on his academic writing, which he continues against all odds. As he faces an arbitrary enforced early retirement from his professorial duties, he also begins to take more time to enjoy simple pleasures with his wife, Eva, as they revel in long nature walks, the perils and pleasures of driving a second-hand car, and in watching the cinema. His refusal to submit to the progressively more invective growth of lies, invectives, and accusations of the Nazi regime build into a quiet resolve to resist in the way he knows best, by maintaining an intelligent, insightful, and careful witness to the everyday horrors perpetrated with malice and cunning on the Jews as the scapegoat for all of Germany's post-WWI social and economic woes. One stands by as we watch Victor and Eva systematically stripped of everything of meaning to them; their house, car, telephone, typewriter, even their beloved cat. While he understands all too well the dangers for him and his family, he consistently resists the increasingly strident pleas from family members for him to emigrate primarily because he identifies himself first and foremost as a German, and he refuses to abandon the Fatherland to the beastial likes of Hitler and the Nazis. One's sense of horror is magnified by his careful attention to the day to day details of living in the regime, the difficulties in finding socks, or clothing, or a cobbler, or vegetables, coffee, tobacco (both he and Eva are smokers), dealing with increasingly restrictive curfews, the ordeal and shame associated with the enforced wearing of the yellow star of David, the progressive acts of enforced segregation from the general populace, the occasional experiences at degradation at the hands of a youthful crowd of Hitler Youth. Yet there is great humanity evidenced here, both within the Jewish community and without it. The pathos of ordinary people caught in the web of a totalitarian state is made quite clear; unlike other academics who recently have argued in belief of a generalized and universalized hate on the part of ordinary Germans leading to their willing complicity in the persecution of Jews, Klemperer offers almost daily testimony of the unending acts of kindness, generosity, and personal risks that everyday citizens take to help and assist Jews to survivie against the dictates of the totalitarian regime. Again and again he is given free food, extra provisions, someone looking deliberately the other way when they did so at personal risk. Klemperer seems to acknowledge that life in Nazi Germany was a hell for all of the citizens, Jew and non-Jew alike. Interestingly enough, at one point he mentions his personal willingness to forgive and forget towards most other Germans, but reserves enduring special scorn, animosity and bile for academics who became fellow-travelers of the regime to save their personal position and privilege. This is a book that should become required reading for college students in world history. I am looking forward to continuing exploring this rite of passage as I begin reading the second volume of the diaries.
Rating:
Summary: An Undoubted Masterpiece ..... And Yet ......
Review: There is no doubt that this edited version of Victor Klemperer's 1933-41 diaries should be read by anyone with the slightest interest in the Holocaust/Shoah and I am eagerly awaiting the publication of the paperback version of Volume 2 which brings the story up to the end of the war and the Klemperers' miraculous survival. The essence of the story has been adequately covered by other reviewers and I will not reprise it except to add that I, too, was taken aback by the degree of sympathy with which Klemperer was often treated by many 'Aryan' Germans - some of them friends but many just people that he casually encountered, even occasionally NSDAP members. Not that this mitigates the horror of the Shoah in any way but it does go some way to show that the attitude of many ordinary Germans to the Jews was much more nuanced than some contemporary historians would have us believe. My main reservation about this book is, in a sense, an irrevalence but one from which I couldn't shake myself free, for all the fascination of the diary and the historical convulsion in which it is set. I refer to the personality of Victor Klemperer himself. For all the horror of what he experienced and the honor due to him for simply managing to come out the other side as a sane human being the man himself is boring, self-obsessed, hypochondriacal and, on occasion, cold to the point of inhumanity as when he - metaphorically - contemptuously shrugs his shoulders at the suicide of a friend who could not bear the strain of waiting for the pogrom that they all knew was inevitable. That, at times, he recognises his own coldness is a saving grace but, all in all, I do not think that I would have liked to know Professor Klemperer. A second irritant is the translation and editing. Martin Chalmers' rendition of the German text into English is often surprisingly stilted and awkward. More annoyingly, he fails to provide us with background information which would have clarified some of the more enigmatic aspects of Klemperer's narrative. The most obvious of these concerns Klemperer's wife Eva. Eva's health is a constant leit-motif of the text - at some points the diary portrays her as an almost complete invalid while at others she is engaged in heavy carpentry and seems to have played an active part in the building of their house in the suburb of Dölschen. So central to Victor's story is Eva's presence and the apparent contradictions concerning her health that the absence of even her photograph, much less any information as to what really did (or didn't) ail her is frustrating in the extreme.
Rating:
Summary: Full of Emotional Horror, Without the Physical Gore
Review: This book enabled me to see war torn Germany in a different light than before... The light of forever optimisim. Victor is an inspriration to the minds of the superflous world of today. Written with total honesty, I was engrossed into his day to day living. My interpreations of life are now for the better. No doubt this is honestly a "must read" for anyone who has an intrest in life during WWII
|
