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“Today over breakfast we talked about the extraordinary capacity of human beings to bear and become accustomed to things. The fantastic hideousness of our existence: fear of every ring at the door, of ill-treatment, insults, fear for one’s life, of hunger (real hunger), ever new bans, ever more cruel enslavement, deadly danger coming closer every day, every day new victims all around us, absolute helplessness — and yet still hours of pleasure, while reading aloud, while working, while eating our less than meagre food, and so we go on eking out a bare existence and go on hoping. [Dresden, 30 May 1942]” — Victor Klemperer
Today over breakfast we talked about the extraordinary capacity of human beings to bear and become accustomed to things. The fantastic hideousness of our existence: fear of every ring at the door, of ill-treatment, insults, fear for one’s life, of hunger (real hunger), ever new bans, ever more cruel enslavement, deadly danger coming closer every day, every day new victims all around us, absolute helplessness — and yet still hours of pleasure, while reading aloud, while working, while eating our less than meagre food, and so we go on eking out a bare existence and go on hoping.
[Dresden, 30 May 1942]