Fairys
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The memoirs of Victor Klemperer and Kazimierz Sakowicz expose a harsh truth of the HolocaustЖthe Nazi claws of terror extended beyond the death camps and were dug firmly into the realities of daily life throughout Germany and Eastern Europe. Klemperers journal is renowned as a meticulous first-hand account of life as a German Jew under the NazisЖhe gives a detailed, almost daily description of the deteriorating conditions of German Jewry during the war. Sakowicz, a Polish journalist living in present-day Lithuania, has left behind a fragmented, yet methodically outlined observation of the nearly daily killings of Jews and non-Jews in the village of Ponary. While both men leave behind illuminating evidence, these reports dont shed light on all fundamental aspects of the Holocaust. Klemperer exposes the plight of German Jewry while Sakowicz presents a seemingly unbiased account of the extermination of Wilno Jews and other “Nazi enemies,” but neither is privy to the most familiar Holocaust atrocityЖthe concentration camp. Although Nazi Germany encompassed a greater part of Europe by 1942, no single victim or onlooker experienced or witnessed every horror of Nazi terror, rendering the memoirs of Klemperer and Sakowicz enlightening yet incomplete.
In 1942, a full year after the “Final Solution” had been implemented, Victor Klemperer was a resident of a Jews House in Dresden Germany with his wife. Nazi decrees reduced the Klemperers to near-starvation and deprived them membership in mainstream German culture and society. A converted Protestant man married to an “Aryan” woman, Klemperers identity prior to the Nazi regime was fundamentally GermanЖwith the Gestapo, terror tactics, and the “social death” of German Jewry, the Nazis forced Klemperer, now a “Mischlinge,” to obtain a Jewish identity. On January 12, 1942, Klemperer is hauled into the Gestapo headquarters simply for riding the number 16 tram. As he approaches the building with his “dogcatcher,” Klemperer notes, “ÐThis is the Gestapo building, about which so many terrible stories are told.” Hes subjected to aggressive questioning regarding his motives for being on the tram and frequenting Chemnitzer Platz, and the Gestapo officers end the interrogation with threats. “And if we see you here again, youre going. You know where to.” Klemperer also anticipates the frequent “street abuse” of “Aryan” Germans. After the incident at the Gestapo building, Klemperer adheres to the suggested guidelines and takes them one step further.
Since then I have taken only a very few steps in the open air, have not left this area and shall not leave it again. The business of their fabulous tyranny, brutality, mocking humiliation has taken hold of me far too much. Since then, I have no longer been able to get rid of thoughts of death.
What is unexpected by Klemperer are the more common instances of unexplainable kindness and human compassion from “good Germans.” On May 8, 1942, Klemperer recorded an encounter with two elderly women on Wasaplatz. “They stop, one comes toward me, holding out her handÐ…She only smiles and shakes my hand, says: ÐYou know why! and goes off before I can say a word.” Klemperer himself immediately contrasts such simple gestures of humanity, which are usually equally subtle and quiet, with the cruelty of Nazified “Aryan” citizens. “Such demonstrations (dangerous for both parties!) are said to happen frequently. The opposite of the recent: ÐWhy are you still alive, you rough?! And both of these in Germany and in the middle of the twentieth century.” With the tragic fire-bombing of Dresden by the Allies, Klemperer experiences the equalization of war. “We would have to try to find our people, I would have to remove my star, just as he [Eisenmann]. Eva thereupon ripped the star from my coat with a pocketknife.” As Victor and Eva attempt to find safety in Dresden, an ambulance comes along. “Ð…An ambulance man was dispensing eye-dropsÐ…It was very soon my turn. ÐNow, dad, Im not going to hurt you! He removed some dirt from the injured eyeÐ…then put stinging drops in both eyes.” Under conditions of attack, Klemperer can conceal his Jewish identity and he thus experienced catastrophe as a German and a citizen in Dresden, not simply as a Jew.
Although he suffers severe repression under the Nazis, Klemperers account as a German Jew does not encompass every crucial aspect of the Holocaust. “In the last few days I heard Auschwitz (or something like it)Ð…mentioned as the most dreadful concentration campÐ…Buchenwald, near Weimar, is