Book Description
The publication of Victor Klemperer's secret diaries
brings to light one of the most extraordinary documents of
the Nazi period. "In its cool, lucid style and power of
observation," said The New York Times, "it is the
best written, most evocative, most observant record of daily
life in the Third Reich." I Will Bear Witness is a work
of literature as well as a revelation of the day-by-day
horror of the Nazi years.
A Dresden Jew, a veteran of World War I, a man of letters and
historian of great sophistication, Klemperer recognized the
danger of Hitler as early as 1933. His diaries, written in
secrecy, provide a vivid account of everyday life in Hitler's
Germany.
What makes this book so remarkable, aside from its literary
distinction, is Klemperer's preoccupation with the thoughts
and actions of ordinary Germans: Berger the greengrocer, who
was given Klemperer's house ("anti-Hitlerist, but of
course pleased at the good exchange"), the fishmonger,
the baker, the much-visited dentist. All offer their thoughts
and theories on the progress of the war: Will England hold
out? Who listens to Goebbels? How much longer will it last?
This symphony of voices is ordered by the brilliant,
grumbling Klemperer, struggling to complete his work on
eighteenth-century France while documenting the ever-
tightening Nazi grip. He loses first his professorship and
then his car, his phone, his house, even his typewriter, and
is forced to move into a Jews House (the last step before
the camps), put his cat to death (Jews may not own pets), and
suffer countless other indignities.
Despite the danger his diaries would pose if discovered,
Klemperer sees it as his duty to record events. "I
continue to write," he notes in 1941 after a terrifying
run-in with the police. "This is my heroics. I want to
bear witness, precise witness, until the very end." When
a neighbor remarks that, in his isolation, Klemperer will not
be able to cover the main events of the war, he writes:
"It's not the big things that are important, but the
everyday life of tyranny, which may be forgotten. A thousand
mosquito bites are worse than a blow on the head. I observe,
I note, the mosquito bites."
This book covers the years from 1933 to 1941. Volume Two,
from 1941 to 1945, will be published in 1999.
