Language:
English
Year of publication:
2014
Titel der Quelle:
Journal of War & Culture Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
7,4 (2014) 336-349
Keywords:
Klemperer, Victor,
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Personal narratives
Abstract:
Klemperer's diaries (published in 1995) were well-received by German readers, both academic and non-academic, in particular because Klemperer identified with the German people and portrayed his countrymen as victims of the Nazis. Queries to what extent the diaries can be used as a historical source. Their referentiality, or ability to convey factual details, and their relationality, or ability to account for the author's interaction with the people around him, are limited. Klemperer was aware of these limitations: he admitted that many of the facts and statistics he presented were based on rumors and second-hand sources, and that being a Jew, isolated from German society, he could not know the genuine moods of the Germans and their attitudes toward the anti-Jewish policies. Moreover, Klemperer is often inconsistent in his assessment of the German public's ideological adherence to the regime and of their antisemitism, as well as in his moral judgment of their behavior. Nevertheless, his diaries are a valuable source for scholars because they do contain a mass of concrete information and have a rich relational quality that reflects his subjective experience of history.
DOI:
10.1179/1752627214Z.00000000054
URL:
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