When writers publish their diaries years after writing them, they often append a preface or afterword, a layer of retrospective reflection that complicates the already unique temporality of the diary’s ever-shifting present. The focus of this talk is on the self-encounters that take place in diaristic paratexts from non-Jewish Germans who wrote diaries during the Second World War. The diary’s paratexts highlight the discontinuous nature of the self, the various ways individuals position themselves as Zeitzeugen, and the diary’s function as a space for writerly self-construction in the context of German Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit.