I Will Bear Witness, Volume 1 by Victor Klemperer

This post was originally published on a now-retired blog that I maintained from roughly 2005 to 2013. As a result, there may be some references that seem out of date. 

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This is an actual diary of a Jewish man named Victor Klemperer who survived the Holocaust. It was interesting from a historical point of view, but a little tedious at times as it obviously focused on a lot of day-to-day details and relationships of this man’s life.

In fact, one of the most interesting things about the book is that when the Nazis come to power in 1933 and the early years, Victor purposely avoids commenting on the political events of the day, trusting the newspapers to record them, and focusing instead on his own struggles to keep his position as a professor of French literature and write his books of literary criticism.

As the years progress, however, and the Nazis tighten their grip, his diary inevitably focuses more and more on the political and social atrocities that are being committed. He does this, of course, because they begin to affect him personally, but also because it’s clear by the end of the book that he can no longer trust what the newspapers say. As he cites, after all, how many times can the Russian Army be annihilated?

Volume 2 is somewhere on my “to-read” shelf. It’ll be interesting to see what my reaction is to that and when I get to it.

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This post appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.