Victor KlempererResenhas

Now that fascism is on the rise again, we need to go back to the language that marked its ascendancy in Germay and Klemperer's notes are fundamental in the task of identifying the main characteristics of this language.

Chillingly amazing book about how the official language of the Third Reich changed the language of everyone in Germany used even the ones opposed the Nazis.

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Klemperer-LTI-la-langue-du-IIIeme-Reich/2937

> LTI, la langue du IIIe Reich, de Victor Klemperer, 373 pages, 1996, Pocket Agora. — « Lis ce livre, il est essentiel ! » me presse un ami écrivain. Je n'ai pas été déçu. L'auteur, qui défend pied à pied l'identité allemande qu'on lui dénie, a extrait de son propre journal tenu en Allemagne de 1933 à 1945, ce « carnet de notes d'un philologue, Lingua Tertii Imperii ». Novlangue pour les nuls, plus révélateur que Animal farm ou 1984 de George Orwell, car réellement vécu par un professeur d'université, spécialiste de la littérature française du 18' s.
Langue simple et directe, légèrement ironique. L'auteur démontre par l'exemple comment les clichés langagiers finissent par exercer une emprise toxique sur l'esprit, comment une langue qui poétise peut penser à notre place, comment à force de répétitions constantes, d'énoncés lancinants, de harangues, de jargon sentimentaliste, la croyance finit par prendre le pas sur la pensée, comment les intellectuels s'inclinent devant la bêtise (lâcheté, confort, conformisme).
« Aucun d'eux n'était nazi, mais tous étaient intoxiqués. » (Jean-Pierre LAFFEZ)
—Carnets du Yoga, (277), Mai 2009, (p. 19)

> « Le plus grand
dérèglement de
l'esprit, c'est de croire
les choses parce
qu'on veut qu'elles
soient et non parce
qu'on a vu qu'elles
sont en effet. »
—Bossuet

Nessun libro può sostituire il diario tragico di Klemperer: in esso è l'esperienza della distruzione a parlare, la violenza quotidiana della predicazione di morte. I lemmi, che egli sceglie per l'illustrazione del processo di formazione di una nuova lingua del potere, sono offerti alla sua intelligenza di filologo dalla sua vita quotidiana di perseguitato e si confrontano con la progressiva riduzione della sua esistenza a quella di un testimone. È un libro dal vero, che ci riconduce, con la meticolosa pedanteria di un cronista, ad una storia aberrante come fosse ancora un presente. Michele Ranchetti

One of the most difficult books I've ever read (probably due to the rather precise translation), but also one of the most important. Part diary, part academic notebook, part lecture. Fascinating and horrifying. If you have any interest in philology or linguistics you MUST read this book. If you read German, get the original text - I'm sure it would be much easier to understand, but in any event, if you want to understand the seminal role of language in the authoritarian political process, read this book.

Learn how the Third Reich misused the German language for its cause (and check whether you see any patterns repeating nowadays!)

"Ewige Wachsamkeit ist der Preis der Freiheit!"

This book was amazing.

The Nazis lost World War II eventually, but during their 12-year reign they destroyed entire peoples via extermination camps, book burnings, and renaming regions and towns. At the end of the war, often there weren't enough people left alive to go back to their old town and remember the pre-Nazi way of life. You can still see evidence of this if you visit smaller towns in Germany: the old synagogue may be preserved as a museum, but there's no existing Jewish congregation that has replaced it.

As their control of Germany became more and more complete, the Nazis also constantly revised the image that they projected to their people and the rest of the world. The early-mid-30's seemed to have the most violent language for starting a war in the pursuit of Lebensraum, but the anti-Semitic language was conversely less murderous. And because the Nazis were putting out so much propaganda and revising it so often (Klemperer notes one popular textbook was on its twelfth edition after just eight years of publication), it's easy to lose track of how often the Nazis changed their story.

Klemperer's notes, written continuously during the Nazi regime, serve as a chronology of how the Nazis corrupted all of German life, up to the everyday phrases that people would parrot in the streets. Of how his erstwhile friends would gradually give in to anti-Semitic rhetoric by giving up, believing Hitler (many people believed Hitler would never lose the war, even in April 1945), or just picking up the common vernacular.

He talks about the weird Norse/Teutonic obsession of the Nazis, how they always took the easiest linguistic solution (if you can find an old German word to replace an obviously Latin or American word, do it! But if not, the Latin is fine), their strange obsession with the past. (To my mind, the current usage of the word 'cuckold' is a good English example of the same concept.)

For me, there was a constant undertone of sorrow, especially when Klemperer would talk about developing theories during the war, discussing it with colleagues and friends working in the Jews' House (or from his time as a professor). Almost all references to these friends and colleagues would include an aside of when they died in Auschwitz, or when they were sent to Theriesenstadt and then extermination in the Final Solution.

I highly recommend this book, especially if you know some German - it explained the comparisons a lot more to me, but my German is not strong enough to read a largely academic text.

Ensayo sobre la influencia del lenguaje en la penetración del nazismo como fenómeno de masas en la Alemania hitleriana. El ensayo es el resultado de las notas tomadas por el autor desde la "toma del poder" en 1933 hasta el fin del Reich. Imprescindible estudio filológico del autoritarismo.

En 1935, Víktor Klemperer, catedrático de Filología en la Universidad Técnica de Dresde (Alemania), perdió su puesto de trabajo a causa de las políticas raciales del Régimen de Hitler. Él era judío, hijo de un rabino, y como tal pasaba a ser considerado no alemán.

Poco importaban su germanofilia o el hecho de estar casado con una mujer aria. Fue perseguido, acosado y amenazado de muerte, al igual que su esposa. Desde 1933 hasta 1945, su único consuelo fue recopilar y escribir sus impresiones lingüísticas como filólogo, que fueron publicadas una vez acabada la guerra, en 1947, en un interesante ensayo llamado LTI. La lengua del Tercer Reich.

Klemperer tenía claro que las palabras podían ser tan eficaces, mortíferas y certeras como la persona que las pronunciaba, o peor aún, como aquellos que creían en su significado con una fe ciega e inquebrantable. No obstante, a simple vista, un fanático no tiene por qué constituir un peligro: solo es un vehemente defensor de aquello en lo que cree. Pero, ¿qué ocurre cuando las ideas que se defienden entran en conflicto con los derechos fundamentales de otras personas?

Pero, ¿qué era lo que él llamaba la “perversión del lenguaje”? ¿Cómo influyó la propaganda de Goebbels y el constante intercambio de información manipulada entre los propios alemanes?

A pesar de que han pasado más de 70 años desde su publicación, La lengua del Tercer Reich sigue funcionando como un enorme escaparate en el que poder mirarse y analizarse. El lenguaje de las redes sociales, tan dado a la toxicidad, solo es una prueba actual de la necesidad de una sociedad crítica, capaz de entender que la información es mucho más que lo que se comparte en un post o en un tweet.

https://www.elsaltodiario.com/pensamiento/la-lengua-del-tercer-reich-la-semilla-...

De dagboeken van Victor Klemperer (1881-1961), de professor literatuur die als één van de weinige joden de tweede wereldoorlog in Duitsland zelf overleefde, behoren sinds hun publicatie in 1995 tot de lijst van de meest sprekende getuigenissen over de nazi-vervolgingen. De complete dagboeken zelf beslaan niet alleen de periode van het ultrakorte ‘Duizendjarige Rijk’ (1933-1945), maar ook die van daarna, toen Klemperer één van de culturele boegbeelden van het door de Sovjets gedirigeerde Oost-Duitsland was geworden.
In dit kleine boekje zijn alleen de notities over het laatste half jaar van de oorlog, de eerste helft van 1945 opgenomen. De meest tot de verbeelding sprekende episode daarin is de beschrijving van het gruwelijke bombardement op Klemperer’s thuisstad Dresden, waarbij de geallieerden met brandbommen zowat het hele centrum van die stad van de kaart veegden en tot 25.000 slachtoffers maakten. Klemperer beschrijft het allemaal vanuit zijn eigen perspectief, met oog voor de ontreddering en aandoenlijke details. De rest van het dagboek in deze periode is vooral gewijd aan hun vlucht naar Zuid-Beieren, de komst van de Amerikanen, en hun moeizame terugkeer naar Dresden, dat intussen in de Russische bezettingszone lag.
Tijdens de lectuur vroeg ik me af in hoeverre deze notities een weergave zijn van het eigenlijke dagboek dat Klemperer bijhield (hij maakt er herhaaldelijk melding van hoe moeilijk het was om tussendoor wat op papier te krijgen), en in hoeverre ze nadien bewerkt zijn. Op het internet vond ik daarover eigenaardig genoeg weinig informatie. Op basis van dit kleine boekje heb ik de indruk dat het om een redelijk authentieke weergave gaat. Klemperer laat zich er bijvoorbeeld ook van zijn kleine kant zien, als hij zijn afschuw uitspreekt over stinkende, luidruchtige, volkse mensen en zich herhaaldelijk beroept op zijn professorentitel om privileges op te eisen.
Al bij al is dit een treffend getuigenis van een periode van ontreddering, in de overgang van het Nazi-regime naar de geallieerde bezetting. Terecht schrijft Klemperer: “beleven we niet onafgebroken, sinds 1914 en vooral sinds 1933, en de laatste tijd in steeds sterkere mate, het alleronwaarschijnlijkste, het gruwelijk fantastische in het kwadraat, is het voorheen volkomen onvoorstelbare voor ons niet vanzelfsprekend en alledaags geworden?”

There are many extraordinary things about the quality of Klemperer's life and story, but to mention one: the detailing of the incremental accretion of one horrific indignity after another.

Update: Klemperer on the connection between Romanticism and the Nazis.

https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2015/07/05/berlioz-and-the-excesses-...


First post on this book:

To set the scene: Klemperer was one of the Jews to survive WWII in Germany because he was married to an Aryan. Prior to Hitler, he was an academic in the field of literature and, having been forced out of his job, he kept detailed diary notes on how language was used under the Nazis in Germany. It was his way of trying to deal with the situation he was in, utilising his linguistic talents for a far greater cause than his academic work would ever be able to do.

This volume is only part of his published diaries of the period and, as will be evident from the name, is concerned with a specific aspect. I can only imagine how horrifying the others must be. As is always the case, reading small details of one person’s life can be moving in a way large statistics fail to be. We see him in his university being hit on the head over and over with a book by a German academic because he could. A person who reads books for a living, physically assaulting another person with a book because he can. Being forced to kill their cat because the Nazis decided that Jews couldn’t have pets. His angry bewilderment as he watches nice non-Jewish Germans explaining that Hitler is for the best. His even angrier perplexity that he has Jewish friends saying the same thing.

Rest here:

http://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/the-language-of-the-third-...

Update: Klemperer on the connection between Romanticism and the Nazis.

https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2015/07/05/berlioz-and-the-excesses-...


First post on this book:

To set the scene: Klemperer was one of the Jews to survive WWII in Germany because he was married to an Aryan. Prior to Hitler, he was an academic in the field of literature and, having been forced out of his job, he kept detailed diary notes on how language was used under the Nazis in Germany. It was his way of trying to deal with the situation he was in, utilising his linguistic talents for a far greater cause than his academic work would ever be able to do.

This volume is only part of his published diaries of the period and, as will be evident from the name, is concerned with a specific aspect. I can only imagine how horrifying the others must be. As is always the case, reading small details of one person’s life can be moving in a way large statistics fail to be. We see him in his university being hit on the head over and over with a book by a German academic because he could. A person who reads books for a living, physically assaulting another person with a book because he can. Being forced to kill their cat because the Nazis decided that Jews couldn’t have pets. His angry bewilderment as he watches nice non-Jewish Germans explaining that Hitler is for the best. His even angrier perplexity that he has Jewish friends saying the same thing.

Rest here:

http://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/the-language-of-the-third-...

Update: Klemperer on the connection between Romanticism and the Nazis.

https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2015/07/05/berlioz-and-the-excesses-...


First post on this book:

To set the scene: Klemperer was one of the Jews to survive WWII in Germany because he was married to an Aryan. Prior to Hitler, he was an academic in the field of literature and, having been forced out of his job, he kept detailed diary notes on how language was used under the Nazis in Germany. It was his way of trying to deal with the situation he was in, utilising his linguistic talents for a far greater cause than his academic work would ever be able to do.

This volume is only part of his published diaries of the period and, as will be evident from the name, is concerned with a specific aspect. I can only imagine how horrifying the others must be. As is always the case, reading small details of one person’s life can be moving in a way large statistics fail to be. We see him in his university being hit on the head over and over with a book by a German academic because he could. A person who reads books for a living, physically assaulting another person with a book because he can. Being forced to kill their cat because the Nazis decided that Jews couldn’t have pets. His angry bewilderment as he watches nice non-Jewish Germans explaining that Hitler is for the best. His even angrier perplexity that he has Jewish friends saying the same thing.

Rest here:

http://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/the-language-of-the-third-...

I wrote this a few years ago, but nothing's changed, not in my part of the world, anyway. It was around the time I was reading Klemperer's book on the language of the third reich, and interactions with friends online prompted it.

In Australia and no doubt elsewhere in the world, this sequence is happening.

First we have terror.

Next we have anti-terror.

And new on the line is terror of anti-terror, or anti-anti-terror, such as a glut of journalistic articles telling us why the Australian Government's new anti-terror laws are 1984 and the instigation of the thing we should really be terrified of. You can see an example here.

This is the spin we all create: the Nazis, Mark (my friend) who quotes the Nazis, Ed (my friend) and I guess, me, much as I'd like to think I'm if not above, then at least apart from, spin.

Mark the other day quoted a highranking Nazi talking about the effect of propaganda, in this case, the value of creating fear, the implication being that this is what is happening in Australia at the moment.

Göring: the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

He followed this up by linking to one of the many media articles talking about the Orwellian world into which Australia has now descended and which is the true enemy, the one of which we should be truly terrified.

As it happens, my reading at the moment has me firmly entrenched in the 1930s and WWII, a sickening period to be reliving, but also an educational one, especially in view of IS. Mark referred to IS in terms of fascism the other day, but as Klemperer would be quick to point out, there is a massive difference between fascism and Nazism. Clearly we would have to say, if we observe this difference, that IS is not fascist, but something far more horrific, and the comparison to Nazism seems more accurate to me.

Because of this reading, I happened to come across something said by a highranking Nazi too and it is this:

Himmler: The best political weapon is the weapon of terror. Cruelty commands respect.

The fact is, propaganda is one thing. It can't hurt, it might help, and no doubt the Nazis were masters of utilising it for their cause. But terror is like this. It is getting beaten to death in the street. It is being forced into slavery - and not just any old slavery, but slavery where you are starved to death and treated in unspeakable ways before being killed in equally unspeakable ways. It is not only about groups of Jews being forced naked into rooms where they are gassed to death, but about the people who watched this happen and enjoyed it. Ordinary people who got their jollies like this. It is about being a French person in occupied France in the resistance and what that entailed. If one German was killed by you, then ten French prisoners were killed. When that didn't help it became more and more French for one German. It is about being in so-called Free France but being forced into slavery for the Germans. If you were not Jewish, that is. If you were Jewish, some other appalling fate. Terror in the IS area and in other parts of the world where fundamentalist Islam invades is like this. It is fucking terrifying. That is what Australia is fighting against at the moment.

I don't have the skills, nor the presumption to present a true picture of the sheer terror that was life in Europe in this period if you weren't willing to be one of the terrorisers and maybe even if you were. But surely it can't be too hard to put yourself in this world and get an idea of it.

This is not a world I want to be part of. Probably most Germans would have thought they didn't want to be part of it either, given the choice, and even after some of them, to their surprise perhaps, discovered that it was fun watching groups of naked human beings being gassed to death. It happened, and it happened because people let it happen. At which point do we step in? Having seen when and how this process took place in WWII, I find it hard to believe it isn't right to step in earlier rather than later.

The bottom line is, however, the terror is real. It isn't something the PM of Australia has created because you don't like what he's done to the Barrier Reef or women's shelters. And if he - and others - have attempted to deal with this through anti-terror, ie creating fear of terror, one can hardly blame him. It is hard to believe that it is necessary even. Fear of terror? Count me in. Fighting against terror? Count me in. Hoping that this doesn't turn into something Orwellian. Count me in. Do I put this last? Yep. It's a no-brainer.

In the 1930s everybody outside Germany let what was happening continue. They watched Hitler happen. They watched ordinary Germans become Nazis. They watched Germans kill Jews - 'hey, as long as it's just Jews and homosexuals and people like that, let's not worry about it.' They let Germany start brutally taking over other countries. 'Hey, it's not our country, let's hope for the best.' Nobody ever wanted to do anything much about it until they perceived their own country to be under threat. World War Two was not the only horrifying consequence of this willingness to hope for the best.

Oh, it's only Kurds. It's only women. It's only homosexuals. And you know. These guys aren't so awful really, they are maybe a bit crazy. Hey, let's send in some therapists. Yeah. Let's see if that works. And yeah, maybe if we leave them alone, you know. They'll leave us alone. Well, hell's bells, they said they would leave other countries alone. Okay, we'll give them half of Czechoslovakia. God damn. They've taken the other half too.

My nightmares are half IS and half Nazi. They are both real.

I wrote this a few years ago, but nothing's changed, not in my part of the world, anyway. It was around the time I was reading Klemperer's book on the language of the third reich, and interactions with friends online prompted it.

In Australia and no doubt elsewhere in the world, this sequence is happening.

First we have terror.

Next we have anti-terror.

And new on the line is terror of anti-terror, or anti-anti-terror, such as a glut of journalistic articles telling us why the Australian Government's new anti-terror laws are 1984 and the instigation of the thing we should really be terrified of. You can see an example here.

This is the spin we all create: the Nazis, Mark (my friend) who quotes the Nazis, Ed (my friend) and I guess, me, much as I'd like to think I'm if not above, then at least apart from, spin.

Mark the other day quoted a highranking Nazi talking about the effect of propaganda, in this case, the value of creating fear, the implication being that this is what is happening in Australia at the moment.

Göring: the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

He followed this up by linking to one of the many media articles talking about the Orwellian world into which Australia has now descended and which is the true enemy, the one of which we should be truly terrified.

As it happens, my reading at the moment has me firmly entrenched in the 1930s and WWII, a sickening period to be reliving, but also an educational one, especially in view of IS. Mark referred to IS in terms of fascism the other day, but as Klemperer would be quick to point out, there is a massive difference between fascism and Nazism. Clearly we would have to say, if we observe this difference, that IS is not fascist, but something far more horrific, and the comparison to Nazism seems more accurate to me.

Because of this reading, I happened to come across something said by a highranking Nazi too and it is this:

Himmler: The best political weapon is the weapon of terror. Cruelty commands respect.

The fact is, propaganda is one thing. It can't hurt, it might help, and no doubt the Nazis were masters of utilising it for their cause. But terror is like this. It is getting beaten to death in the street. It is being forced into slavery - and not just any old slavery, but slavery where you are starved to death and treated in unspeakable ways before being killed in equally unspeakable ways. It is not only about groups of Jews being forced naked into rooms where they are gassed to death, but about the people who watched this happen and enjoyed it. Ordinary people who got their jollies like this. It is about being a French person in occupied France in the resistance and what that entailed. If one German was killed by you, then ten French prisoners were killed. When that didn't help it became more and more French for one German. It is about being in so-called Free France but being forced into slavery for the Germans. If you were not Jewish, that is. If you were Jewish, some other appalling fate. Terror in the IS area and in other parts of the world where fundamentalist Islam invades is like this. It is fucking terrifying. That is what Australia is fighting against at the moment.

I don't have the skills, nor the presumption to present a true picture of the sheer terror that was life in Europe in this period if you weren't willing to be one of the terrorisers and maybe even if you were. But surely it can't be too hard to put yourself in this world and get an idea of it.

This is not a world I want to be part of. Probably most Germans would have thought they didn't want to be part of it either, given the choice, and even after some of them, to their surprise perhaps, discovered that it was fun watching groups of naked human beings being gassed to death. It happened, and it happened because people let it happen. At which point do we step in? Having seen when and how this process took place in WWII, I find it hard to believe it isn't right to step in earlier rather than later.

The bottom line is, however, the terror is real. It isn't something the PM of Australia has created because you don't like what he's done to the Barrier Reef or women's shelters. And if he - and others - have attempted to deal with this through anti-terror, ie creating fear of terror, one can hardly blame him. It is hard to believe that it is necessary even. Fear of terror? Count me in. Fighting against terror? Count me in. Hoping that this doesn't turn into something Orwellian. Count me in. Do I put this last? Yep. It's a no-brainer.

In the 1930s everybody outside Germany let what was happening continue. They watched Hitler happen. They watched ordinary Germans become Nazis. They watched Germans kill Jews - 'hey, as long as it's just Jews and homosexuals and people like that, let's not worry about it.' They let Germany start brutally taking over other countries. 'Hey, it's not our country, let's hope for the best.' Nobody ever wanted to do anything much about it until they perceived their own country to be under threat. World War Two was not the only horrifying consequence of this willingness to hope for the best.

Oh, it's only Kurds. It's only women. It's only homosexuals. And you know. These guys aren't so awful really, they are maybe a bit crazy. Hey, let's send in some therapists. Yeah. Let's see if that works. And yeah, maybe if we leave them alone, you know. They'll leave us alone. Well, hell's bells, they said they would leave other countries alone. Okay, we'll give them half of Czechoslovakia. God damn. They've taken the other half too.

My nightmares are half IS and half Nazi. They are both real.

2016-10-17

In the first installment of I Will Bear Witness Klemperer spent a great deal of time worrying about his health and borrowing money from one of his siblings. He stressed constantly about being in debt and dying of a heart attack. He didn't know which was worse. In the second installment, as the Gestapo power grows crueler and crueler, Klemperer's worries shift from paying the bills to getting enough food to eat and being "arrested" or called to the concentration camps. He is helpless with despair as he hears of dogcatching soldiers who are actually hunting Jews. Terror reins when friends are arrested and then shot "trying to escape", and worse. Those unwilling to meet an unpredictable fate take matters into their own hands by committing suicide. In the face of all this uncertainty, little by little Klemperer and his wife lose simple creature comforts. When they move into their third and smallest apartment Victor is shocked by the lack of privacy; the promiscuity of everyone living so close to one another. Then the bombs fall. This is probably the most revealing of Klemperer's diaries. How he and his wife escape is nothing short of miraculous. I held my breath through every page.

No matter how you dress it up, this is a hard book to read. Mainly because hindsight is 20/20 and we know what a travesty the Nazi years truly were to the German Jewish people. Today, reading Klemperer's journals are valuable lessons in fortitude, courage, and grace. Despite everything he remained committed to documenting his world around him...even as it slowly fell apart. At first the indignity was small, a blip: the loss of admittance to his library's reading room. No Jews allowed. Then, the indignities became too big to ignore - the loss of his teaching position at the university, then use of the beloved automobile, then they had to move from their new dream house. Every creature comfort was slowly stripped away. His typewriter, tobacco, even new socks. Can you imagine smoking blackberry tea or filling an application for used socks? What is so admirable is, in the face of all this humility, Klemperer still recognized and drew attention to the civility his enemy occasionally displayed.

From the very beginning, although he was only 52 years of age at the start of I Will Bear Witness, Klemperer was convinced he had not long to live. He made comments like, "I no longer think about tomorrow" (p 15), and "My heart cannot bear all this misery much longer" (p 17). He was sure his heart would give out any day. It was if each passing birthday came as a shock to him because he could see the future of Germany's political landscape. How would he survive it? Yet, every day he strove to improve his life and that of his wife of 45 years. Buying land, building a house, learning to drive a car, taking Eva to her beloved flower shows, keeping a diary and continuing to write throughout it all. These are the little triumphs of Klemperer's life.

Let me start with the obvious – – this is a very depressing book. Klemperer describes what happened when Hitler came into power in 1933. Hitler blamed the Jews for the poor economy and Germany's loss in World War I. This craziness about Hitler and the Nazis to take unprecedented actions against the Jews. Imagine living in a society and a country where you could not trust anyone – – neighbors, work colleagues, government officials, the police etc. Imagine living in a country that could take away your business, your home and even your life!

This is the circumstances that the author and his wife found themselves in. I have read various accounts of what life was like in Nazi Germany. It's hard to believe how many Germans were utterly cruel and indifferent to many of the atrocities happening around them.

And in 2017, we should not be fooled or lax, these types of actions can easily take place again.

Victor Klemperer was een Duitse Jood, professor in de Franse en Italiaanse letterkunde die gedurende het grootste deel van zijn leven nauwgezet een dagboek bijhield en daarmee onbedoeld een kroniekschrijver werd van de Nazijaren in Duitsland en wat die te betekenen hadden voor met name de Joodse inwoners van Duitsland. Als door een wonder overleefde Victor Klemperer de Tweede wereldoorlog. Klemperer hield een dagboek bij vanaf zijn 18e tot aan zijn dood. Van de jaren 1900 tot 1918 heeft hij gedurende de oorlog een "Curriculum vitae" geschreven (ook gepubliceerd en door mij in het Duits gelezen), waarna hij de oorspronkelijke dagboeken van die jaren heeft vernietigd. In het Duits zijn de dagboeken vanaf 1918 tot 1958 uitgegeven in 6 delen. Voor het Nederlands heeft W. Hansen een keuze uit die dagboeken gemaakt en vertaald en van noten voorzien. Van het grootste belang is vooral "Het bittere einde" de dagboeken over de jaren 1933-1945, de nazitijd. De dagboeken van 1945 tot 1958 geven een goed beeld van de eerste jaren van de DDR en de wederopbouw en het communisme. De dagboeken van de jaren 1918 tot 1933 zijn in het geheel niet vertaald. Na een eerste lezing van de dagboeken in het Nederlands was ik ook begonnen met het jaar 1918 en ik kan goed begrijpen waarom die jaren niet vertaald zijn.
Een aantal citaten uit de dagboeken:
31-03-1933: De Joden is de toegang tot het studentenhuis ontzegd. Met hoeveel Joods geld is enkele jaren geleden dat studentenhuis gebouwd!
03-04-1933: Alles wat ik altijd als onduits heb beschouwd, grofheid, onrechtvaardigheid, huichelarij, indoctrinatie van de massa tot aan de bedwelming toe, dat floreert hier allemaal.
07-04-1933: Voor het eerst in mijn leven voel ik politieke haat jegens een collectieve groep, een dodelijke haat. In de oorlog was ik onderworpen aan de wetten van het krijgswezen, maar daar heersten in ieder geval nog wetten; nu ben ik aan de willekeur overgeleverd.
25-04-1933: De Pruisische minister van onderwijs heeft voorgeschreven dat leerlingen die zijn blijven zitten, indien mogelijk toch overgaan als ze lid zijn van de Hitler-beweging.
15-05-1933: Van de schandelijke en krankzinnige daden van de nationaal-socialisten noteer ik alleen wat me op de een of andere manier persoonlijk raakt. Al het andere is immers in de kranten na te lezen.
22-05-1933: Grap: vraag aan de immigrant in Palestina: "Komt u uit overtuiging of uit Duitsland?"
20-07-1933: Het bevel aan alle ambtenaren althans tijdens het werk en op hun werkplek de "Duitse Hitler-groet" te brengen. Aanvullend: "Er wordt verwacht" dat ze ook elders die groet brengen als ze de verdenking willen vermijden het nieuwe systeem bewust af te wijzen.
28-07-1933: Ik heb helemaal geen rust meer om in mijn dagboek te schrijven. En toch vind ik het idee om mijn memoires te schrijven steeds aantrekkelijker.
10-08-1933: Een vriend, uit een concentratiekamp vrijgekomen. Hij moest er als brilledrager luisteren naar de naam "brillehond", hij werd gedwongen op handen en voeten te kruipen en zijn nap te apporteren als hij eten wilde hebben. Toen hij vrijgelaten werd, moest hij ondertekenen dat hij over alles zou zwijgen.

15-02-1934: Maar ik word van dat handopsteken letterlijk onpasselijk, en dat ik me daaraan steeds weer probeer te onttrekken , zal me ooit nog eens de kop kosten. -De waarheid spreekt voor zichzelf- maar de leugen spreekt via pers en radio.
25-03-1934: Door een speciale wet is paragraaf 6 van de ambtenarenwet, volgens welke iedere overbodige ambtenaar met pensioen kan worden gestuurd, met 6 maanden verlengd. Deze zomer zal ik er het slachtoffer van worden.
04-08-1934: De volmaakte staatsgreep wordt door het volk nauwelijks opgemerkt, het speelt zich allemaal geluidsloos af, overstemd door lofzangen op de overleden Hindenburg. Ik durf te wedden dat miljoenen er geen flauw idee van hebben wat voor ontzettends er is gebeurd.
21-08-1934: De vijf miljoen nee-stemmen en ongeldige stemmen op 19 augustus tegenover 38 miljoen ja-stemmen betekenen ethisch heel veel meer dan alleen een negende deel van het geheel. Er is moed en bewustzijn voor nodig geweest.
04-09-1934: Ik moest een kleine toespraak houden. Mijn spottende opmerking dat ik geen lange en mooie rede zou houden omdat ze die elke dag op de radio konden horen terwijl we ons hier wilden vermaken, werd niet begrepen.
14-10-1934: Een bijzonder goede mop: Hitler, de katholiek, heeft twee nieuwe feestdagen in het leven geroepen: Maria-Denunciata en Maria-huiszoeking.
30-12-1934: Het weerzin wekkendst vind ik het specifiek Joodse pessimisme met zijn weldadige kalmte. Gettomentaliteit, opnieuw ontwaakt. We worden vertrapt, dat is nu eenmaal zo. Als we onze zaken maar kunnen blijven doen en er geen pogrom komt. Beter Hitler dan iemand die nog erger is!
13-02-1935: In een boek hoort niets actueels thuis. Alles wat voor de dag berekend is, verliest ook met de dag zijn effect.
11-06-1935: Er bestaat ook nog gelukkige simplicitas. Moeder Köhler zei vanuit een diepe overtuiging: Het kan niet meer lang duren, de rechtvaardige God kan dat niet toelaten. Ze was gewoonweg ontzet toen ik antwoordde dat Hij het al een beetje lang aan het toelaten was.
21-07-1935: Eva zei dat de nieuwste vorm van Joods snobisme is: met de nazi's sympathiseren.
11-08-1935: Op de tramborden in de Prager Strasse: "Wie bij een Jood koopt, is een volksverrader".
17-09-1935: Terwijl ik gisteren aan het schrijven was, had de "Rijksdag" in Neurenberg de wetten op het Duitse bloed en de Duitse eer al aangenomen: tuchthuis voor huwelijken en buitenechtelijk verkeer tussen Joden en "Duitsers".
05-10-1935: De woorden van Lessing: "Wie bij sommige dingen zijn verstand niet verliest, heeft geen verstand," heb ik aangevuld: "Wie tegenwoordig rustig van hart blijft, heeft geen hart."
06-03-1936: Wij voeren nooit gesprekken in het vertrek waar de telefoon staat; zonder dat de eigenaar het weet worden er vaak microfoons ingebouwd.
16-07-1936: Waarschijnlijk is het Italiaans fascisme geen spat minder verwerpelijk dan het nationaal-socialisme, en ik vind het alleen minder weerzinwekkend omdat het niet naar het bloed vraagt en de Joden niet vervolgt.
16-08-1936: Als het ooit zo ver komt dat het lot van de overwonnenen in mijn hand zou liggen, liet ik het volk gaan, en zelfs ettelijke leiders die het wellicht toch eerlijk bedoeld kunnen hebben en niet wisten wat ze deden. Maar ik liet alle intellectuelen ophangen, de professoren een meter hoger dan de anderen; ze zouden aan de lantarens moeten blijven hangen zolang de hygiëne het maar enigzins zou toelaten.
09-10-1936: Vanochtend in de bibliotheek kreeg ik de voorzichtige mededeling dat ik als niet-Ariër geen gebruik meer mag maken van de leeszaal.
31-12-1936: Wie geen doodsvijand van Hitler is, kan geen vriend van me zijn.

12-09-1937: Overal langs de wegen borden met "Joden ongewenst!"

31-01-1938: Van twee kanten heb ik hetzelfde gehoord: bij examens op scholen of bij leerling-vakwerkers wordt de wereldbeschouwelijke "strikvraag" gesteld: "Wat komt er na het derde Rijk?" Het antwoord moet luiden: "Niets, dit is het eeuwige Duitsland." In de twee mij gemelde gevallen is het voorgekomen dat de arme jongens heel onschuldig geantwoord hebben: "Het vierde Rijk." Beiden zijn, zonder dat er met hun eigenlijke prestatie rekening is gehouden, gezakt als een baksteen.
20-03-1938: Sinds acht dagen wapperen de vlaggen, sinds gisteren zit er op iedere paal van ons hek een groot geel stuk papier met davidster: Jood.
30-03-1938: Legendevorming midden in de 20ste eeuw. In Berlijn brengt een man zijn vrouw, die moet bevallen, naar het ziekenhuis. Boven het bed hangt een schilderij van Jezus. De man: "Zuster, dat schilderij moet weg, ik wil niet dat mijn kind als eerste die Jood ziet." De zuster, ze kon zelf niets doen, maar ze zou het doorgeven, 's Avonds krijgt hij een telegram van de arts: "U hebt een zoon. Het schilderij hoefde niet te worden verwijderd, want het kind is blind."
10-04-1938: Hoofdzaak voor de tyrannis van welke soort dan ook is het onderdrukken van de drang om vragen te stellen. En dat is zo gemakkelijk. Als ik, professor enz., levenslang in het denken geschoold, zoveel en zo voor de hand liggende vragen vijftig jaar lang niet heb gesteld, hoe zou het volk dan op het idee komen vragen te stellen?
10-08-1938: Vanaf 1-10 is de officiële erkenning van alle joodse artsen ingetrokken, ze mogen ook niet meer als "heelkundige" werkzaam zijn; ze mogen dus verhongeren. Per dezelfde datum wordt er voor de joden een legitimatiekaart ingevoerd.
06-12-1938: De joden zijn "onbetrouwbaar" en mogen dus niet aan het stuur zitten, hun manier van rijden zou ook de Duitse verkeersgemeenschap beledigen, te meer daar ze arrogant genoeg gebruik hebben gemaakt van rijkssnelwegen die door Duitse arbeidershanden zijn aangelegd.
25-12-1938: Gisteren bleek voor het eerst in het derde Rijk de kerstbeschouwing in de krant geheel van het christendom ontdaan te zijn. Grootduitse kerst- de Duitse ziel betekent de wedergeboorte van het licht, de verrijzenis van het Duitse rijk. De jood Jezus en al het religieuze en algemeen menselijke geëlimineerd.

14-03-1939: Eergisteren was op onze uitnodiging Annemarie hier: we hebben haar ons zilverwerk gegeven; als ze het ons niet in een andere tijd terug kan geven, dan mag ze het houden; als het inleveren van het zilver ook voor Ariërs gaat gelden, moet ze het in de Elbe gooien. Maar het mag niet in handen van de nazi's vallen.
01-11-1939: Over het bestand zijn tegen de blokkade: je kunt één, hoogstens twee rollen closetpapier krijgen. Je kunt maar twee doosjes lucifers krijgen.
12-11-1939: Circulaire van de Joodse Gemeente: we moeten voor het nieuwe telefoonboek vanaf nu de toegevoegde naam Israël opgeven, anders volgt er straf.
31-12-1939: De pogroms van november 1938 hebben op het volk geloof ik minder indruk gemaakt dan het wegvallen van de reep chocola met Kerstmis.

13-01-1940: Ook zijn we per 15 februari gedwongen de waren die we op de bon moeten kopen, van een bepaalde winkel in de stad te betrekken.
06-07-1940: Nieuw verbod voor joden om de Grosse Garten en andere parken te betreden.
11-08-1940: De telefoon is alle joden opgezegd en verboden.
30-08-1940: Er komen gele banden ter aanduiding van de joden.
21-10-1940: Nieuwe dwangmaatregelen in judaeos: ook gebruikmaking van uitleenbibliotheken verboden.

20-02-1941: Iedereen is bang om ook maar enigszins verdacht te worden van sympathie voor de joden, die angst schijnt onafgebroken te groeien.
01-03-1941: Vanmorgen weigerde het melkmeisje naar boven te komen: ze mag niet meer in joodse huizen bezorgen.
13-03-1941: Officiële mededeling in de krant: voor levensmiddelenkaarten van krijgsgevangenen en voor J-kaarten mogen geen sinaasappels meer gegeven worden.
29-05-1941: Ik zat al in het achterste vertrek toen ik het bordje zag: "verboden voor joden", niet zoals gebruikelijk: "Joden ongewenst".
10-08-1941: Nieuw onheil: rookverbod voor joden. Maar het schijnt dat het "Voor joden verboden" werkelijk op alle winkeldeuren komt te staan.
08-09-1941: De gele jodenband wordt ingevoerd.
15-09-1941: De jodenband, als davidster werkelijkheid geworden, is vanaf 19-9 van kracht.
18-09-1941: We mogen van de bus helemáál geen gebruik meer maken en van de tram alléén op het voorbalkon.

I Will Bear Witness, 1933-1941 & 1942-1945
A Diary of the Nazi Years
By Victor Klemperer

Victor Klemperer was a professor of French literature, specializing in the Enlightenment, employed at the Technical University of Dresden at the time the Nazis came to power in 1933. At that point in his career he already had a few scholarly works in print and was planning another, a project on the 18th century he continued researching and writing until circumstances forced him to postpone that work. But he did continue the personal diary he had begun many years earlier, now with the purpose of documenting not the big picture of Nazism in Germany (he would leave that to historians) but the experience of it by a single individual, along with other ordinary personal matters he had been recording for decades.

The fact that the Nazis considered him a Jew despite his conversion to Protestantism in his youth put him in the bulls-eye of their abuse. But he was married to an "Aryan," and on that account some of the harshest measures heaped on non-Aryans were sometimes blunted or postponed, including shipment to Theresienstadt, the concentration camp in Czechoslovakia where most of Dresden's Jews were to meet their deaths. He had to wear the yellow star, avoid contact with Aryans, not use public transportation, subsist on starvation rations, and would in fact have been sent off to his death within a few days had not British Lancaster bombers rained fire on the population of Dresden, Aryan and non-Aryan alike, in the spring of 1945, allowing Victor and his wife Eva to escape the city and leave behind his Jewish identity by claiming his identification papers were destroyed in the fire.

There are plenty of books about the Nazi era. What's so special about the Klemperer diaries? Why would I recommend these two volumes to anyone interested in learning what the Hitler regime was like over any work by a professional historian, however worthy that study may be?

My answer has to do with the special character of the diaries, their combination of documentation of a horror growing worse with each passing day (everyone Klemperer talks to believes such an absurd regime will surely fall within months) and the details of a middle-aged upper-middle-class couple's life, including the stresses and strains on their marriage, not all of them the result of Nazi oppression. One quickly comes to feel one is living with the Klemperers, if only as a fly on the wall, as they struggle to complete the construction of their "dream house" in a suburb just outside Dresden — Eva's obsession despite their having to subsist on a modest pension after her husband losses his university post.

The daily visits to the house site as they scrape together the money to lay a foundation, then construct modest living quarters and, of course, a garden, seem like an exercise in futility, given what the reader knows is going to happen a few years later. You want to shout at them, "Get out! Get out!" But Eva is determined to have her house, partly, one suspects, because she had given up her own career as a musicologist and performer in favor of her husband's career. Besides, Hitler really did seem too extreme, too downright surreal, to last much longer (odd, that in America he was seen as a "moderate" who would keep the Bolshevik menace in check). And, besides, as the author of these diaries keeps asserting, he, Victor Klemperer, is a German, a real German, not like the aberrations who had taken over his country, though his faith in that identity is sorely tried over the next twelve years.

The course of the Klemperer marriage, however inadvertent, is continuous and detailed. In the '30s, Victor is careful to not complain about Eva's morning fits or constant dental emergencies or her obsession with the house, but the reader wonders what is going on in the woman's mind, when (with the hindsight of history) the dreadful future seems so clearly written on the wall. But as the years pass and the noose tightens economically and in every other way around the necks of Jews, Eva meets each new deprivation with remarkable personal resources, not just sharing all of her husband's social and economic disabilities but assisting neighbors in need in the "Jews houses" where the Klemperers are finally forced to live, right down to scrubbing their floors. She also risks her freedom (as an Aryan she could have secured her own status simply by divorcing him), if not her life, by smuggling the manuscript pages of his diary to an Aryan safe house. Using her Aryan ration card she spends hours each day scrounging for food (mostly potatoes, sometimes rotten). And, yet, the Klemperers maintain a remarkably active social life, mostly with others marked as Jews but also with a handful of Aryans.

In the end, the diaries reveal the slow maturing of two human beings who are already well into middle age at the point the diaries open. Victor evolves from a slightly ivory-towerish academic into a more fully rounded person capable of both empathy and a sense of complexity for the people, all the people, he lives among; Eva, from a house-hungry spouse with possibly a grievance about the loss of her own chance at a career into a courageous and devoted spouse and neighbor. Their marriage and love for one another grows stronger with each new stress placed upon them. What seems in the early pages of the diaries a marriage held together perhaps largely by routine and convenience, by its mid-point has become a thing of unshakable devotion and deep affection.

The diaries provide documentation of many different aspects of German society under the Third Reich, despite the restriction of their being written from one man's point of view. Among these is the obvious fact that many Germans had no use for Hitler, were sympathetic to those the Nazis designated as Jews or otherwise non-Aryan and, as might be expected in a situation where getting the wherewithal just to survive became more and more difficult, were largely ignorant of the strictures Jews were living under. Why else would they risk their own freedom and lives by befriending and assisting individual Jews? There is a naïveté about some of their expressions of support — a stranger crossing the street to shake the hand of someone wearing a yellow star (much to the chagrin of the person wearing it, knowing how dangerous such an act was, primarily for the star-wearer); a shopkeeper slipping extra food into the bag of someone wearing the star and offering a whispered word of encouragement to hang on, it won't be long now till the war is over.

There are far too many of these acts, some of them a good deal more substantial than what I've indicated, to put them down to anything other than sincerity. And on the question of what ordinary Germans knew about the "Final Solution," even Jews themselves didn't realize what shipment to Theresienstadt meant until the last year or two of the war. For a time they even entertained a belief that in Theresienstadt they would at least have a better diet and get decent medical care. It's hard to believe non-Jews could have known something more, at least not ordinary working stiffs, despite the manic, irrational broadcasts by Goebbels blaming "World Jewry" for all the evils in the world (in one he insists the Jews using their American dupes were bombing Rome in order to destroy Christianity, just a first step in their plan to kill all the gentiles in the world). Even when the truth becomes clear about Auschwitz and the other death camps, some supporters of Hitler insist the Fuehrer could not have known about the camps because he was a "man of peace.”

Klemperer writes:

"...National Socialism was already [in 1923] ...powerful and popular. Except that at the time I did not yet see it like that. How comforting and depressing that is! Depressing: Hitler really was in line with the will of the German people. Comforting: One never really knows what is going on. Then the Republic seemed secure, today the Third Reich appears secure."

But he also writes, later:

"There is no German or West European Jewish question. Whoever recognizes one, only adopts or confirms the false thesis of the NSDAP and serves its cause. Until 1933 and for at least a good century before that, the German Jews were entirely German and nothing else.... The anti-Semitism, which was always present, is not at all evidence to the contrary. Because the friction between Jews and Aryans was not half as great as that between Protestants and Catholics, or between employers and employees or between East Prussians for example and southern Bavarians or Rhinelanders and Bavarians. The German Jews were part of the German nation, as the French Jews were a part of the French nation, etc. "

There seem, in fact, to be two distinct kinds of (Aryan) Germans in these diaries: Nazi thugs who descend on Jews' apartments, beat up the old women and men and steal the butter off the table before trashing the place; and "ordinary" Germans, even officials like local police who, when they had to visit the Jews Houses, doffed their hats, shook hands, apologized for the intrusion and even offered words of reassurance. One wonders how this could be the same country, never mind the same city. These "good" Germans give Victor hope, though by the end he believes the entire nation will have to be reeducated in the values he believes to have been essential to German culture dating back to the Enlightenment (he blames Romanticism for Nazism). He, happily, lives to see that day and even to reclaim his former professorship at the Technical University of Dresden, which lay then in the Soviet zone and becomes part of East Germany.

One wonders why these diaries are not more widely read as firsthand witness for that horrific period of German history. Is it because life as Klemperer records it is too complex for our sound-bite culture (some of the older men in the Jews House cheer for the Wehrmacht — they had fought against the Brits and French in the first world war and can't bring themselves to change sides). Is it because he insists early on that Zionism and Nazism are ideologically the same thing: blood = land? I keep expecting him to change his mind about Zionism after the slaughter of Jews goes into high gear in 1942-43, but he sticks to his guns. He fully expects to be one of the slaughtered, watches as his neighbors are taken away in twos and threes. He loses his faith in the Germany he believed in before 1933, but he never loses faith in the principles he believes that culture exemplified at its best.

It's impossible to summarize a work as varied and rich as these diaries, never mind give a sense for the experience of living through those years vicariously with the Klemperers. The diaries end in 1945 with a return to their suburban home after living for several weeks as refugees in Bavaria. But that return is, of course, just another beginning. The volume of the diary that takes up where these two leave off extends as far as 1959 and was published in Britain, but not in the US. Klemperer died the following year, 1960, of a heart attack.

I Will Bear Witness, 1933-1941 & 1942-1945
A Diary of the Nazi Years
By Victor Klemperer

Victor Klemperer was a professor of French literature, specializing in the Enlightenment, employed at the Technical University of Dresden at the time the Nazis came to power in 1933. At that point in his career he already had a few scholarly works in print and was planning another, a project on the 18th century he continued researching and writing until circumstances forced him to postpone that work. But he did continue the personal diary he had begun many years earlier, now with the purpose of documenting not the big picture of Nazism in Germany (he would leave that to historians) but the experience of it by a single individual, along with other ordinary personal matters he had been recording for decades.

The fact that the Nazis considered him a Jew despite his conversion to Protestantism in his youth put him in the bulls-eye of their abuse. But he was married to an "Aryan," and on that account some of the harshest measures heaped on non-Aryans were sometimes blunted or postponed, including shipment to Theresienstadt, the concentration camp in Czechoslovakia where most of Dresden's Jews were to meet their deaths. He had to wear the yellow star, avoid contact with Aryans, not use public transportation, subsist on starvation rations, and would in fact have been sent off to his death within a few days had not British Lancaster bombers rained fire on the population of Dresden, Aryan and non-Aryan alike, in the spring of 1945, allowing Victor and his wife Eva to escape the city and leave behind his Jewish identity by claiming his identification papers were destroyed in the fire.

There are plenty of books about the Nazi era. What's so special about the Klemperer diaries? Why would I recommend these two volumes to anyone interested in learning what the Hitler regime was like over any work by a professional historian, however worthy that study may be?

My answer has to do with the special character of the diaries, their combination of documentation of a horror growing worse with each passing day (everyone Klemperer talks to believes such an absurd regime will surely fall within months) and the details of a middle-aged upper-middle-class couple's life, including the stresses and strains on their marriage, not all of them the result of Nazi oppression. One quickly comes to feel one is living with the Klemperers, if only as a fly on the wall, as they struggle to complete the construction of their "dream house" in a suburb just outside Dresden — Eva's obsession despite their having to subsist on a modest pension after her husband losses his university post.

The daily visits to the house site as they scrape together the money to lay a foundation, then construct modest living quarters and, of course, a garden, seem like an exercise in futility, given what the reader knows is going to happen a few years later. You want to shout at them, "Get out! Get out!" But Eva is determined to have her house, partly, one suspects, because she had given up her own career as a musicologist and performer in favor of her husband's career. Besides, Hitler really did seem too extreme, too downright surreal, to last much longer (odd, that in America he was seen as a "moderate" who would keep the Bolshevik menace in check). And, besides, as the author of these diaries keeps asserting, he, Victor Klemperer, is a German, a real German, not like the aberrations who had taken over his country, though his faith in that identity is sorely tried over the next twelve years.

The course of the Klemperer marriage, however inadvertent, is continuous and detailed. In the '30s, Victor is careful to not complain about Eva's morning fits or constant dental emergencies or her obsession with the house, but the reader wonders what is going on in the woman's mind, when (with the hindsight of history) the dreadful future seems so clearly written on the wall. But as the years pass and the noose tightens economically and in every other way around the necks of Jews, Eva meets each new deprivation with remarkable personal resources, not just sharing all of her husband's social and economic disabilities but assisting neighbors in need in the "Jews houses" where the Klemperers are finally forced to live, right down to scrubbing their floors. She also risks her freedom (as an Aryan she could have secured her own status simply by divorcing him), if not her life, by smuggling the manuscript pages of his diary to an Aryan safe house. Using her Aryan ration card she spends hours each day scrounging for food (mostly potatoes, sometimes rotten). And, yet, the Klemperers maintain a remarkably active social life, mostly with others marked as Jews but also with a handful of Aryans.

In the end, the diaries reveal the slow maturing of two human beings who are already well into middle age at the point the diaries open. Victor evolves from a slightly ivory-towerish academic into a more fully rounded person capable of both empathy and a sense of complexity for the people, all the people, he lives among; Eva, from a house-hungry spouse with possibly a grievance about the loss of her own chance at a career into a courageous and devoted spouse and neighbor. Their marriage and love for one another grows stronger with each new stress placed upon them. What seems in the early pages of the diaries a marriage held together perhaps largely by routine and convenience, by its mid-point has become a thing of unshakable devotion and deep affection.

The diaries provide documentation of many different aspects of German society under the Third Reich, despite the restriction of their being written from one man's point of view. Among these is the obvious fact that many Germans had no use for Hitler, were sympathetic to those the Nazis designated as Jews or otherwise non-Aryan and, as might be expected in a situation where getting the wherewithal just to survive became more and more difficult, were largely ignorant of the strictures Jews were living under. Why else would they risk their own freedom and lives by befriending and assisting individual Jews? There is a naïveté about some of their expressions of support — a stranger crossing the street to shake the hand of someone wearing a yellow star (much to the chagrin of the person wearing it, knowing how dangerous such an act was, primarily for the star-wearer); a shopkeeper slipping extra food into the bag of someone wearing the star and offering a whispered word of encouragement to hang on, it won't be long now till the war is over.

There are far too many of these acts, some of them a good deal more substantial than what I've indicated, to put them down to anything other than sincerity. And on the question of what ordinary Germans knew about the "Final Solution," even Jews themselves didn't realize what shipment to Theresienstadt meant until the last year or two of the war. For a time they even entertained a belief that in Theresienstadt they would at least have a better diet and get decent medical care. It's hard to believe non-Jews could have known something more, at least not ordinary working stiffs, despite the manic, irrational broadcasts by Goebbels blaming "World Jewry" for all the evils in the world (in one he insists the Jews using their American dupes were bombing Rome in order to destroy Christianity, just a first step in their plan to kill all the gentiles in the world). Even when the truth becomes clear about Auschwitz and the other death camps, some supporters of Hitler insist the Fuehrer could not have known about the camps because he was a "man of peace.”

Klemperer writes:

"...National Socialism was already [in 1923] ...powerful and popular. Except that at the time I did not yet see it like that. How comforting and depressing that is! Depressing: Hitler really was in line with the will of the German people. Comforting: One never really knows what is going on. Then the Republic seemed secure, today the Third Reich appears secure."

But he also writes, later:

"There is no German or West European Jewish question. Whoever recognizes one, only adopts or confirms the false thesis of the NSDAP and serves its cause. Until 1933 and for at least a good century before that, the German Jews were entirely German and nothing else.... The anti-Semitism, which was always present, is not at all evidence to the contrary. Because the friction between Jews and Aryans was not half as great as that between Protestants and Catholics, or between employers and employees or between East Prussians for example and southern Bavarians or Rhinelanders and Bavarians. The German Jews were part of the German nation, as the French Jews were a part of the French nation, etc. "

There seem, in fact, to be two distinct kinds of (Aryan) Germans in these diaries: Nazi thugs who descend on Jews' apartments, beat up the old women and men and steal the butter off the table before trashing the place; and "ordinary" Germans, even officials like local police who, when they had to visit the Jews Houses, doffed their hats, shook hands, apologized for the intrusion and even offered words of reassurance. One wonders how this could be the same country, never mind the same city. These "good" Germans give Victor hope, though by the end he believes the entire nation will have to be reeducated in the values he believes to have been essential to German culture dating back to the Enlightenment (he blames Romanticism for Nazism). He, happily, lives to see that day and even to reclaim his former professorship at the Technical University of Dresden, which lay then in the Soviet zone and becomes part of East Germany.

One wonders why these diaries are not more widely read as firsthand witness for that horrific period of German history. Is it because life as Klemperer records it is too complex for our sound-bite culture (some of the older men in the Jews House cheer for the Wehrmacht — they had fought against the Brits and French in the first world war and can't bring themselves to change sides). Is it because he insists early on that Zionism and Nazism are ideologically the same thing: blood = land? I keep expecting him to change his mind about Zionism after the slaughter of Jews goes into high gear in 1942-43, but he sticks to his guns. He fully expects to be one of the slaughtered, watches as his neighbors are taken away in twos and threes. He loses his faith in the Germany he believed in before 1933, but he never loses faith in the principles he believes that culture exemplified at its best.

It's impossible to summarize a work as varied and rich as these diaries, never mind give a sense for the experience of living through those years vicariously with the Klemperers. The diaries end in 1945 with a return to their suburban home after living for several weeks as refugees in Bavaria. But that return is, of course, just another beginning. The volume of the diary that takes up where these two leave off extends as far as 1959 and was published in Britain, but not in the US. Klemperer died the following year, 1960, of a heart attack.

I had read this book as a conclusion to the first two volumes which I had read earlier. Similar in theme to the first two works; the Nazi and Soviet regimes using similar techniques in pacifying the people. Also similar personal themes in not knowing how much longer He was going to live, and being relevant in the future. Good picture of day to day life of this time and place.

A sort of combination memoir and philology book. The author undertakes a serious study of language in Nazi Germany, but that study is part and parcel of his own experience living as a Jew in Dresden, and he includes many anecdotes about his own experiences. I admit I'm not into philology -- okay, I had to look up the word in the dictionary -- and I only read the book because Klemperer kept talking about it in his diaries. And in turn he talks about his diaries a lot in this book. So they complement each other, although they can and do stand on their own as well.

I was intrigued, sometimes fascinated, by Klemperer's observations of how language evolved under Nazism. An example: readers of concentration camp memoirs will be familiar with the camp term "organize," meaning "to steal." Well, according to Klemperer, the ordinary German people also used the term "organize" meaning to obtain something illegally, either by theft or black marketing -- as in, "They don't issue ration cards for that anymore, you'll have to organize it." I had no idea the same term was used outside the camps -- and Klemperer, it appears, had no idea it was used within the camps, because he doesn't mention it.

I think he would have been very intrigued by 1984 and Newspeak. I also think that if I applied his methods of observation to the media and conversation in my country, I would probably learn some disquieting things.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in language, the Holocaust or World War II. I would also recommend Klemperer's diaries “I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933-1941”, “I Will Bear Witness 1942-1945: A Diary of the Nazi Years” and the post-war one, “The Lesser Evil: The Diaries of Victor Klemperer 1945-1959”. Especially the first two.