I Will Bear Witness

(In Development)

I Will Bear Witness is a half hour documentary following a tour through Germany of George Bartenieff’s Obie Award winning dramatization of The Diaries of Victor Klemperer, a relatively unknown masterpiece of World War II literature.

Written by a Dresden University professor from 1933-1945, the diaries chronicle Klemperer’s perspective as a citizen, an intellectual, a neighbor, and a wearer of the Yellow Star, watching the Germany he knew and loved fall under the spell of the Nazi regime.

I Will Bear Witness is a multi-layered journey of homecoming, discovery, and rediscovery for George about what it means to be a German, what it means to be a Jew, and how to reconcile the two. It is about one actor’s emotional and moral response to one man’s emotional and moral response to tyranny.

The program will weave performance footage with scenes shot in Germany pertaining to Klemperer, and George’s own biography.