{"id":3021,"date":"2018-01-21T13:19:31","date_gmt":"2018-01-21T18:19:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/?p=3021"},"modified":"2018-01-21T13:19:31","modified_gmt":"2018-01-21T18:19:31","slug":"stunning-diary-reveals-how-much-ordinary-germans-knew-about-the-holocaust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/stunning-diary-reveals-how-much-ordinary-germans-knew-about-the-holocaust\/","title":{"rendered":"Stunning Diary Reveals How Much Ordinary Germans Knew About the Holocaust"},"content":{"rendered":"

On my last German book tour for my memoir My Germany<\/em> I was reminded of what a rich book culture that country has when I browsed in crowded book stores at the train stations, and studied billboards–yes, billboards–for all kinds of books, not just thrillers.<\/p>\n

And speaking at Justus Leibig University in Giessen north of Frankfurt, I heard about a remarkable diary that had just been published in German and is finally available in English from Cambridge University Press.<\/p>\n

The devastating book by Friedrich Kellner is the diary of a court clerk in a small German town in the western state of Hesse. The German title translated as All Minds Are Clouded and Darkened<\/em>; the author\u2019s own title was My Opposition<\/em> (Mein Widerstand<\/em>), which is how it’s appearing in English<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This diary makes it very clear that despite any claims to the contrary, ordinary Germans during the War knew a great deal about what was being perpetrated in their name upon the Jews and every other victim of the Nazis. It\u2019s simply not true that people did not talk about what was happening, or were so terrorized by the Nazis that they were completely blind to events around them, or silenced. Conversations on these subjects may not have been public, but they were widespread.<\/p>\n

Kellner asked questions, read newspapers carefully, kept clippings, listened to what others were saying, and composed a stunning portrait of what was really going on in Germany before and during the war. Without difficulty, he learned about killings of those deemed mentally unfit. He learned about the real fate of Jews being shipped \u201cto the East.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was remarkably prescient in foreseeing post-war denial: \u201cThose who wish to be acquainted with contemporary society, with the souls of the \u2018good Germans,\u2019 should read what I have written. But I fear that very few decent people will remain after events have taken their course, and that the guilty will have no interest in seeing their disgrace documented in writing.\u201d The diaries go from the beginning of the war in 1939 to just past its end and offer an unparalleled entrance into the years of Nazi destruction.<\/p>\n

Lev Raphael is the author of 25 books<\/a> in genres from memoir to mystery which you can find on Amazon.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On my last German book tour for my memoir My Germany I was reminded of what a rich book culture that country has when I browsed in crowded book stores at the train stations, and studied billboards–yes, billboards–for all kinds of books, not just thrillers. And speaking at Justus Leibig University in Giessen north of … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[877],"tags":[1016,1013,1012,1014,785,1011,1017,1015,416,612],"class_list":["post-3021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","tag-concentration-camps","tag-diaries","tag-diary","tag-germans","tag-germany","tag-holocaust","tag-mass-killings","tag-nazis","tag-world-war-ii","tag-ww-ii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3021"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3030,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3021\/revisions\/3030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}