The lesser evil : the diaries of Victor Klemperer 1945-59 / Victor Klemperer ; translated by Martin Chalmers.

It includes maps and index.

The third and final volume of the diaries of Victor Klemperer, a Jew in Dresden who survived the war and whose 1933-1945 diaries have already beer, hailed as one of the 20th century's most important chronicles.
In June 1945 Victor and Eva Klemperer return to their home in the Dresden suburb. of Dölzschen, a house last seen in 1940 when they were forced to leave it and live in a Jews' House. The immediate postwar period produces shocks and revelations: some people have behaved better than Klemperer had believed, others much worse. He is besieged by those who want his endorsement of their innocence during the Third Reich. He is flattered - but also repelled by the mendacity of many of these requests.
Already 64 in 1945, Klemperer is desperate to resume his academic career, cut short in 1935 by the Nazi laws. He becomes a deputy in the East German parliament and actively supports East German Communism, even as he notes the uncanny similarities between the language of the Third Reich and that of the rulers of the new East Germany. His wife Eva dies in 1951. Within a year, at the age of 70, he marries one of his students, an unlikely but successful love-match.
To outward appearances his remaining years are a success, but his achievements increasingly ring hollow. He consoles himself that Communist East Germany is the 'lesser evil' compared to capitalist West Germany, where former Nazis are once again in positions of influence, but more and more he feels that he has supported the indefensible, indeed that he himself has 'looked the other way'. The diaries end in 1959, a few months before his death in February 1960.
Recorded with Klemperer's characteristic relish for the detail of events great and small, and with unsparing honesty and directness, The Lesser Evil is both a portrait of East German life in the early years of the Cold War and a compelling conclusion to one of the most remarkable diaries of the twentieth century.