I Shall Bear Witness: The Diaries of Victor Klemperer, Volume 1

Front Cover
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998 - Christian converts from Judaism - 500 pages
The diary of Victor Klemperer from 1933 to 1941. Like other German Jews, Klemperer lost his job, his house, and many of his friends, but he remained loyal to his country. Saved for much of the war by his marriage to a gentile, he survived the remaining months of the war in hiding. A publishing sensation in German, 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 by 1933 a professor of languages at Dresden. Over the next decade he, like other German Jews, lost his job, his house and many of his friends.Throughout, he remained loyal to his country, determined not to emigrate, and convinced that each successive Nazi act against the Jews must be the last. Saved for much of the war from the Holocaust by his marriage to a gentile, 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. Shocking and moving by turns, it is a remarkable and important document.

Other editions - View all

About the author (1998)

Born in 1881, Victor Klemperer studied in Munich, Geneva and Paris. He was a journalist in Berlin, taught at the University of Naples and received a DSM during WWI as a volunteer in the German army. He was subsequently a professor of romance languages at the Dresden Technical College until he was dismissed as a consequence of Nazi laws in 1935. He survived the Holocaust and the war and taught again as an academic until his death in 1960.

Bibliographic information