The Lesser Evil : The Diaries of Victor Klemperer 1945-1959

This volume opens in 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.

He is made a professor in Greisfwald, then in Berlin and Halle.

He falls in love and marries again at the age of seventy.

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 diaries so fascinating.