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Last Waltz in Vienna (Paperback)

by George Clare (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
RRP: £7.99
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Last Waltz in Vienna + The World of Yesterday + Beware of Pity
Price For All Three: £23.38

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  • This item: Last Waltz in Vienna by George Clare

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  • The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig

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Product details

  • Paperback: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Pan; 2 edition (4 May 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 033049077X
  • ISBN-13: 978-0330490771
  • Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.8 x 2.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 133,382 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #7 in  Books > Fiction > World > Austrian
    #78 in  Books > Biography > Holocaust
    #81 in  Books > Biography > War & Espionage > World War I

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Product Description

Review

'A beautiful book: a fascinating piece of history... a work of art' Beryl Bainbridge; 'A work of literary genius' Michael Burleigh; 'A deeply moving book. I felt enriched and grateful after reading it' John le Carre; 'Told with calm and dignity. I shall not forget the mother and father' Rumer Godden; 'Admirable, combining very cleverly the historical and personal' Graham Greene; 'There have been many moving stories of Jewish persecution but none more overwhelming than this' Lord Langford; 'Mr Clare leads us gently, but inexorably, to the edge of the pit and then leaves us to look down into it' Edward Crankshaw, Observer; 'This poignant memoir is written from the heart... the truest defence against political hatreds for the future' David Pryce-Jones, Financial Times


Product Description

On Saturday 26 February, 1938, seventeen-year-old Georg Klaar took his girlfriend Lisl to his first ball at the Konzerthaus. His family were proudly Austrian. They were also Jewish. Just two weeks later came the Anschluss. A family had been condemned to death by genocide.

This new edition of George Clare's incredibly affecting account of Nazi brutality towards the Jews includes a previously unpublished post-war letter from his Uncle to a friend who had escaped to Scotland. This moving epistle passes on the news of those who had survived and the many who had been arrested, deported, murdered or left to die in concentration camps, and those who had been orphaned or lost their partners or children. It forms a devastating epilogue to what has been hailed as a classic of holocaust literature.

'A work of literary genius' Michael Burleigh

'A deeply moving book. I felt enriched and grateful after reading it' John le Carré

'Told with calm and dignity. I shall not forget the mother and father' Rumer Godden

'Admirable, combining very cleverly the historical and personal' Graham Greene

'There have been many moving stories of Jewish persecution but none more overwhelming than this' Lord Langford

'Mr Clare leads us gently, but inexorably, to the edge of the pit and then leaves us to look down into it' Edward Crankshaw, Observer

'This poignant memoir is written from the heart ... the truest defence against political hatreds for the future' David Pryce-Jones, Financial Times

See all Product Description

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Customer Reviews

6 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
5.0 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars moving account of the destruction of a family and a country, 22 Sep 2002
By Dr. Sn Cottam "Steve the medic" (Preston, England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This is a very necessary book for anyone who would understand the effects of Nazi racial politics on individuals.

In clear and direct, but extremely moving prose, George Clare describes his family's services to Austria over the years (including in the Austro-Hungarian army) and his own early life in Vienna as a member of an assimilated Jewish family. But behind his idyllic early life is the growing menance of German and Austrian Nazism. The sheer ordinariness of a childhood and adolescence with his universal experiences makes a dramatic contrast with the extraordinary fate that overtakes the Klaars. George escapes to ultimately join the British Army but his parents and other members of his family are deported to be murdered in extermination camps in Poland. At the end of the book, George returns to France, many years later, to piece together his parents' last months of peace and their eventual terrible fate. On the way, Clare explains clearly the growth of Nazism in Austria and how Hitler was able to bully his native land into union with the German Reich.

Superbly written, this is a heartbreaking account of how one family's fate encapsulates in microcosm the destruction of a way of life, a culture, a people and an entire country.

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A truly tragic story, 29 Aug 2004
By Darren Simons (Middlesex, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)      
This is one of the most moving book I have ever read on the subject of the Holocaust and the treatment of Jews that led up to it. Written in the first person, this book describes how an assimilated Jewish family (Klaar) saw the rise of Nazism firstly restrict and then completely destroy their family.

Much of the book tells of the family history which is a key aspect when following his story. George Clare's description of ardent anti-semitism in Austria is particularly shocking but perhaps most significant of all is his very honest response (as an assimilated Jew) to what was happening around him. . At the time of the Anschluss the author was 17 years old - the book somewhat splits itself into two sections... his childhood and then adulthood coupled with anti-semitism.

It is wonderfully written and I cannot recommend this book enough.

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The world they thought they were living in, 7 May 2008
By Jeremy Walton (Oxford, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)      
This review is from: Last Waltz in Vienna (Paperback)
I saw this title in the window of a remaindered bookshop a few days before going to Vienna with my family. I bought it without paying much attention to what it was about, but thinking it would make a nice accompaniment to the trip. It's an excellent, deeply moving story. Beginning with his great-grandfather, who was born when Metternich ruled Austria, Clare deftly charts the progress of his family, delineating their loves, quarrels, quirks and interests, up until the point where he and his parents had to flee Vienna following the Anschluss of 1938. This brings the narrative to a climax, with one of his mother's friends sadly asking "What world did we think we were living in?"

Clare describes Austria's struggle to remain independent from Germany, and the incredible speed at which anti-semitism rose to the surface following the country's capitulation (when, literally, a single day meant the difference between Jewish families being able to escape with most of their possessions and their having to remain, only to be stripped of their jobs and all that they owned). He finds that the abuse of the Jews was - at least initially - adopted much more enthusiastically in Austria than in Germany, although he also describes brave individuals in both countries who refused to go along with the tide. And his account of the end of his parents (who died in Auschwitz) and his uncle (who survived the war, but was irredeemably broken by it) is heartbreaking. Reading this book in Vienna, while walking through the streets mentioned in the narrative, made the events it describes even more vivid, even though it had the effect of turning the friendly, elegant city of the present day into a shadowy backdrop for this sinister tragedy.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Told with honesty and great clarity
This autobiographical book is told with great clarity and honesty. The world of pre-Nazi Vienna is contrasted sharply with the disintegration of culture and the brutality of life... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Sarah Jeffery

5.0 out of 5 stars A fantastic read!
"Last waltz in Vienna" by George Clare is one of the most moving, well-written books I've read in a while and I would thoroughly recommend it! Read more
Published 6 months ago by P Gast

5.0 out of 5 stars A truly tragic story
This is one of the most moving book I have ever read on the subject of the Holocaust and the treatment of Jews that led up to it. Read more
Published on 8 Sep 2004 by Darren Simons

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