1 For an extraordinary essay concerning Wagner, his friendship with the synagogue’s architect Semper, and his desire to have a copy of the lamp that hung before the tabernacle doors see Colin Eisler, ‘Wagner’s Three Synagogues’, Artibus et Historiae, vol. 25, no. 50 (January 2004).
2 Helen Rosenau, ‘Gottfried Semper and German Synagogue Architecture’, Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, vol. 22 (January 1977).
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 For the restoration of the synagogue and its star, see ‘Dresden Synagogue Rises Again’, news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1647310.stm.
7 The demolition was filmed by the Technisches Hilfswerk, a civil protection organization controlled by the German federal government; fragments of the film are to be found on YouTube, though it is the sort of footage that attracts unsavoury viewers.
8 The story of Erich Isakowitz is related by his granddaughter, the artist Monica Petzal. As well as creating powerful and haunting works inspired by her family and the city, Petzal has written of her family in brochures to accompany ‘Indelible Marks: The Dresden Project’. For further information, see www.monicapetzal.com.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Klemperer, I Shall Bear Witness.
12 Ibid.
13 Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday: Memoirs of a European (Cassell, 1943; repr. Pushkin Press, 2009).
14 Timothy W. Ryback, Hitler’s First Victims: And One Man’s Race for Justice (Bodley Head, 2015).
15 See www.monicapetzal.com.
16 Klemperer, I Shall Bear Witness.
17 Zweig, The World of Yesterday.
18 Klemperer, I Shall Bear Witness.
19 Ibid.
20 These insights among others are discussed by John Wesley Young, in ‘From LTI to LQI: Victor Klemperer on Totalitarian Language’, German Studies Review, vol. 28 (February 2005).
21 Henry Ashby Turner, Jr, ‘Victor Klemperer’s Holocaust’, German Studies Review, vol. 22 (October 1999).
22 Young, ‘From LTI to LQI’.
23 Stills from surviving film clips can be seen at en.stsg.de/cms/node/815 – the Saxon Memorial Foundation.