Imprint
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- W&N
Biography: general, Autobiography: historical, political & military, Diaries, letters & journals, Prose: non-fiction, The Holocaust, Second World War, Jewish studies
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 TIMESA 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.
More books by Victor Klemperer
Praise for I Shall Bear Witness: The Diaries Of Victor Klemperer 1933-41
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This is a classic ... Klemperer's diary deserves to rank alongside that of Anne Frank's ... 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 - SUNDAY TIMES
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I can't remember when I read a more engrossing book - SUNDAY TIMES
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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 - FINANCIAL TIMES
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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 - LITERARY REVIEW
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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 - JEWISH CHRONICLE
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Marvellous, depressing, witty, sardonic, devastating - FINANCIAL TIMES
Victor Klemperer
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.
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