Donotremove,
The writer is Victor Klemperer; because of my childhood early into music and listening to the radio provision of music on weekends, I often confused him with this man --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_KlempererI first learned about Victor, several reviews of the book at The New York Times as a matter of course considering but, probably would not have gone right out and bought it, had it not been for chosing in March of 2003 to ask if I could join the Western Europe forum where the moderator had the same last name as our Austrian landlord back in the Thirties.
That was when I inquired, since they, the moderator and her husband, were living in the same home town, if they might be any relation to Oscar who came with his wife in the late Twenties. Germany in itself as the Weimar Republic was already experiencing economic Depression following WW1.
Since the moderator had met her husband at university in the Midstate, it became clear that she knew relatively nothing about the background and history of her husband's hometown( in any case he was not a relative; but recently pre-Xmas I realized there was still a bakery back there with the same family name attached which I hope may trace those things my mother never mentioned to me. Those thing which I recall about the Third Reich were entirely from my observation as a child of how the adults behaved as they talked about certain matters that were occurring. Like the Berlin Olympics, etc.
Why it seems significant to me is that somewhat in reverse, a young woman living there (as we did at the time) met and married a school teacher from Germany,then went back home with him. Although she thought that she had a close relationship, a friendship, with the daughters of the American ambassador to Germany, at this point the entire embassy staff was relocated out of the embassy and quarantined for a short period which was an inconvenience that they found rather exciting, to await transportation back to the US.
The young German-American woman along with her husband and others recruited did a great deal of "resistance" work and she was eventually executed in one of the small facilities within the Berlin metropolitan environment, as were her husband and young college-age recruits; all at varying times however. Hitler, as often hinted in regard to his "cousin" Geli Raubal, had a very psychologically sadistic nature that other young women who worked closely in his environment never guessed; thus his timing of the executions were carefully calculated. The young woman from the US,and being the last to die, was guillotined.
Our Germanic American town, a very small city at the time, had all the usual features of that era when the Bund was in operation locally. I talked with Bob Whelen about that during the reading of Philip Roth's,The Plot Against America, and since Bob was raised in New Jersey (as Roth had been), he confirmed that the same social events were occuring: the Bund Camp for families and children to have summer and autumn outings, the pre-Xmas parties for children at the "Turners"(the Turnverein).
By the time that I was in grade school, the Church and the religious orders had brought us new school-mates and friends and "choir" masters who arrived, through reverse proceedures than the "Ratlines", as "hidden Jews". Before the end of the 1960s, most of my younger sisters' generation had been informed by their grandparents that they really were not Roman Catholics or Christians but were Jewish; thus, this whole suburban generation in German-American communities integrated their Chanukah/Christmas parties as one big holiday bash of togetherness.
Most of us raised through this era never lost our German holiday traditions, those who made their communion in Spring forever hungered after Kaiser tortes that we were allowed to run to the bakery and purchase for our breakfast between morning Mass and the beginning of the school day. We went to soccer games at the Bavarian Club in the summer months; to Oktoberfest in the Autumn for Spanferkel and DAP beer.
However, joining the Western Europe forum made us acquainted with German speakers once again: a Swiss(or, Switzer), an East German, an Austrian, and best of all a shy German seminary-educated "archivist of sorts who rarely spoke but having the strict academic training organized his files of everything (I fall behind every day!).
He tried to entice me to speak/write German by proffering every dialect imaginable including Plat-Deutsch(known locally as dietsch, a language which makes no sense to me whatsoever except for an occasional descriptive word that relates instantly to English as half of English is derived from the Germanic languages).
He then filled me in on many of the events that were clouded as to how they came about( that we had German prisoners residing in our suburban neighborhood, their barracks fenced in behind high wire; it is kind of a German joke, like the mirror image of what began in their homeland). Larger camps were not talked about with children who became our fellow posters and were never told they existed close-by while they were growing up. (as you know, perhaps the largest existed in Texas, it looked relatively gigantic)
Of course I already knew that the Gau/districts into which American states were divided up existed as maps on the walls of the Gau headquarters in Deutschland(because of the German who had told me how to exist in the cellar in case I ever had to during a bombing;and I was told that forty years before it might even become necessary).
Martin then told me, after going through the Nurnburg Laws for maybe the tenth time in my life, revisiting all the refinements, about Victor Klemperer's wife who was not Jewish. They had to decide what to do as a mixed couple. Frau Klemperer organized with the many other wives, since these marriages had been ordinarily very common throughout metropolitan Germany, and held a rally and public demonstration that was just astounding and a revelation to the Nazi authorities who backtracked for quite awhile although imposing stringent regulations of what Jews could do or not do, have or not have, in a household of a mixed relationship. Can you imagine not having a cat because you are not the same race as your spouse?
This however was just biding for time; the Nazis only abiding until things got much worse and did not develop how they intended it would.
The Modern Library through Random House Publishers put out the two volumes in paperback in 1999 but it took me another ten years because I didn't start reading the very small fine print of Victor Klemperer's diary or day-book (so he would not forget anything of the petty, picayune details over time)until three-quarters of a year ago when I had to sit for hours waiting for a friend having knee surgery to come out of the anesthetic and be wakeful enough to be taken home by a special taxi service for moving surgery patients.
There may be another format by now that might make it easier to read on line or by Kindle or listen on CD. I find that everything I am able to read in the fine tiny print of this edition brings to mind several dozens of things from the past, so that I stop to reflect and remember and interpret what it meant while we were having a normal American childhood during the Second World War.
