Author(s): Victor Klemperer

Biography

The son of a rabbi, Victor Klemperer was a professor of languages at Dresden by 1933. 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 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. This is his document of the events.