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I Shall Bear Witness

The Diaries Of Victor Klemperer 1933-41

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I Shall Bear Witness

By: Victor Klemperer
Narrated by: Roger Davis
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Summary

 A publishing sensation, the publication of Victor Klemperer's diaries brings to light one of the most extraordinary documents of the Nazi period.

'A classic ... Klemperer's diary deserves to rank alongside that of Anne Frank's' SUNDAY TIMES

'I can't remember when I read a more engrossing book' Antonia Fraser

'Not dissimilar in its cumulative power to Primo Levi's, is a devastating account of man's inhumanity to man' LITERARY REVIEW

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.

Klemperer 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 account. 20th Century Diaries & Journals Historical Judaism Memoirs, Diaries & Correspondence Military Modern War Holocaust
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Critic reviews

This is a classic ... Klemperer's diary deserves to rank alongside that of Anne Frank's ... These diaries are certain to become not only the main primary source for historians of the Nazi period, but also an essential read for anyone who wishes to understand what it was like to be a Jew living in Germany during the 1930s. But perhaps it is even more than that ... Read this wonderful book and judge for yourself
I can't remember when I read a more engrossing book
This extraordinary book describes in detail, and with unparalleled force and clarity, what it was like to live in Germany under Nazism. The historical record is very much the richer for it
It is not the horror of the Holocaust we see here, but the subtle, barely discernible corruption of daily life
Authoritative ... Victor Klemperer's detailed eye-witness chronicle, not dissimilar in its cumulative power to Primo Levi's, is a devastating account of man's inhumanity to man
His diaries are not only a harrowingly poignant record of the suffering of just one victimised married couple among countless others. They are also a testament to the restitution that the world still owes to those non-Aryans on whose plight too many turned their backs
All generalisations about German attitudes, from Trevor-Roper to Daniel Goldhagen, are dashed about the anthill of detail that Victor Klemperer so copiously and courageously assembled. I can hardly wait for the second volume
The first-hand immediacy of the material gives is an unmatched potency
The most detailed personal account of a German Jew's daily life in the Third Reich outweighs and will surely outlive Goldhagen's sensationalist speculations about German anti-semitism ... It's not levity to call Professor Klemperer German Jewry's Mr Pepys of the Hitler years
Marvellous, depressing, witty, sardonic, devastating
All stars
Most relevant
you want to shout at them....'get out now..cant you see whats happenng'...but when one is livng in a civilized society ,you can see how difficult it must be to see the actual things happenng around you, and also realise that society has truely broken down...this story truely outstanding,with a great narrator...you feel every word.stunning from start to finsh...

how the atrocities gradually creep up on them..and swallow them up..frightening.

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Fascinating detail of a life before and during the Third Reich. You can't help feeling what it was like.

Detailed life of the every day and under terror

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An important book and genuinely frightening, an honest and nuanced account superbly narrated. Deserves to be regarded as a classic.

Classic and always timely

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Klemperer's writing is superb. I was so excited about the possibility of listening to this title on audible, I had the release date marked on my calender. I have such dense reading lists for research, that it is always fabulous to be able to revisit an important work that I can listen to during the course of the day. I have read Klemperer's diaries and his masterful examination of the wholesale distortion of language under the Third Reich, Lingua Tertii Imperii, his observations are so astute, his commentary so insightful. I am loathe to be critical, but I have to say that I was absolutely devastated by the choice of narrator. Such a staccato, nasal performance, where every syllable is over stressed. It sadly must be added to the growing list of books I have bought from audible but cannot listen to. Christian Rodska would have been the perfect narrator for this work. I can only hope that if Audible plans to release the other volumes of Klemperer's, they listen to customer feedback before choosing their narrator.

Klemperer's Genius

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Wish the rest of his dairies 1918=32 and his autobiography Curriculum Vitae was available in English as the rest of his dairies are so good.

Wish the rest of his dairies 1918-32

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