Dimensions
132 x 198 x 32mm
Abridged and translated from the German edition by Martin Chalmers.
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 in 1933 a professor of romance 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 remained loyal to his country and determined not to emigrate, though he became increasingly desperate and pessimistic as the Nazis tightened their grip on power and placed increasing restrictions on the Jews. Unlike so many others, Klemperer managed to escape the concentration camps for many years, largely due to his marriage to an Aryan. In 1945, just as he had been summoned for deportation, 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 in itself.
Powerful, precise and clear-sighted, the diaries have been hailed in Germany as the best-written, most evocative and most observant record of daily life in the Third Reich. Klemperer details the progress of his academic work and his determination to continue with it, domestic trivia and the illness of his wife, the loss of his livelihood and the humiliations increasingly suffered by the Jews. Shocking and moving by turns, it is a remarkable and important document covering the period from Hitler's election to the beginnings of the Holocaust.
