Destined to take its place alongside The Diary of Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel's Night as one of the great classics of the Holocaust, I Will Bear Witness is a timeless work of literature, the most eloquent and acute testament to have emerged from Hitler's Germany. Volume Two begins in 1942, the year the Final Solution was formally proposed, and carries us through to the Allied bombing of Dresden and Germany's defeat.

Victor Klemperer was Professor of French Literature at Dresden University. As a Jew, he was removed from his post in 1935, only surviving thanks to his marriage to an Aryan. Presenting a study of language and its engagement with history, this book draws form Klemperer's conviction that the language of the Third Reich helped to create its culture.

"A publishing sensation in Germany, the publication of Victor Klemperer's diaries brings to light one of the most extraordinary documents of the Nazi period. The son of a rabbi, Klemperer was by 1933 a professor of languages in Dresden."

A publishing sensation in Germany (where they have sold over 100,000 copies at 45), the publication of Victor Klemperer's diaries brings to light one of the most extraordinary documents of the Nazi period. The son of a rabbi, Klemperer was by 1933 a professor of languages in Dresden. Over the next decade he, like other German Jews, lost his job, his house and many of his friends, even his cat, as Jews were not allowed to own pets. Throughout, he, like so many other German Jews, 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, for a Jew in Nazi Germany a daring act ion itself. Shocking and moving by turns, it is a remarkable and important document, as powerful and astonishing in its way as Anne Frank's classic.This edition combines both volumes of his diaries, together forming the complete set. They cover the period from Hitler's election to the beginnings of the Holocaust, to the end of the war. They tell the story of Klemperer's increasing isolation, his near miraculous survival, his awareness of the development of the growing Holocaust as friends and associates disappeared, and his narrow escapes from deportation and the Dresden firebombing in 1945.

The superb, bestselling diaries of Victor Klemperer, a Jew in Dresden who survived the war - hailed as one of the 20th century's most important chronicles. 'Compulsive reading' LITERARY REVIEW 'Deeply engrossing' SPECTATOR 'Klemperer's diary deserves to rank alongside that of Anne Frank' SUNDAY TIMES 'A vivid and powerful account of a remarkable life' SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY June 1945. The immediate postwar period produces many shocks and revelations - some people have behaved better than Klemperer had believed, others much worse. His sharp observations are now turned on the East German Communist Party, which he himself joins, and he notes many similarities between Nazi and Communist behaviour. Politics, he comes to believe, is above all the choice of the "lesser evil". He serves in the GDR's People's Chamber and represents East German scholarship abroad. But it is the details of everyday life, and the honesty and directness, that make these bestselling diaries so fascinating.

"First published in censored form in Yunost 1966, under the title 'Babi Yar'"--T.p. verso.