Victor Klemperer - "I Will Bear Witness."

 

Victor Klemperer

Not all Germans, liked Adolf Hitler or hated Jews. I've just been reading about Victor Klemperer, the cousin of the conductor Otto Klemperer. 

Victor Klemperer lived in Dresden during the war. He was married to a Protestant and his family, who had been Jewish, had converted to Protestantism. He did believe that his conversion, marriage, and his war record, would give him a degree of immunity under the Nazis. This was not to be. He was banned from teaching, publishing, travelling and owning a car. He had to wear a yellow star and he and his wife, like all Jews, were banned from owning cats and dogs. The Nazis had decreed that all domestic pets should live only in "pure Aryan homes." They had to put their beloved tomcat, Muschel, to sleep by anaesthetic. Klemperer was even told that he could no longer make donations to the fund for the prevention of cruelty to German cats. 

In his published diaries, he describes what it was like to live in Germany under Hitler and the Nazi regime. He calls Theodor Herzl, the Jewish founder of the Zionist movement, "a mirror image race theorist and nationalist." Klemperer had an abiding distrust of Zionism and remained a liberal German. In his diaries he cites numerous acts of random or planned solidarity and generosity shown towards him. Cuts of meat and fish are offered to him in rationed stores. Tram drivers abuse the Fuhrer for his benefit. A worker passes by and says: "Chin up - the scoundrels will soon be finished " Klemperer also mentions the exemplary behaviour of German communists and socialists. 

Ironically, it was the allied bombing of Dresden that turned out to be the salvation for Victor Klemperer and his wife. They had already heard that all Jews were to be rounded up and deported to the camps. Amid all the chaos after the bombing of Dresden, Klemperer and his wife, removed their yellow stars and just walked away from Dresden.