In this stunning biography, Jack Fairweather dives deep into the mind and heart of Fritz Bauer, a gay German Jewish judge and prosecutor who attempted to answer two great questions that strike at the root of the Holocaust. First, how could ordinary people be persuaded to commit so great a crime against humanity; and, second, how do we prevent it from ever happening again?
Fairweather sifted through extensive primary sources to understand the moral ambiguity in Germany at the end of World War II; with this information, he put together an image of a country at odds with itself in a way that we have never been shown quite so clearly before. Through this image, he enables us to understand what Bauer was up against in his attempts to expose the Nazi war crimes and criminals, whom he strongly believed should not go unpunished. The country wanted to bury its past, while Bauer wanted the truth to be brought to light.
Bauer, who had been imprisoned in a concentration camp and knew firsthand the desire for cruelty that invigorated the Nazis’ actions, used every tool in his power as a judge and prosecutor to bring war criminals to justice. At the same time, a network of former Nazis was determined to silence him; Bauer forced courtroom battles that implored the world to look at their murderous complicity in the Holocaust.
Ultimately, Bauer was able to orchestrate the capture of Adolf Eichmann, and to instigate and lead the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial. He was determined to compel Germany to confront their crimes and actions. In so doing, he felt he was crafting a path to his major goal — to guarantee that Nazism would never return.
Bauer believed that the way to achieve this was to engage in a deep examination of what he considered the cultural roots of Nazism. He felt that people must try to understand the killers themselves; it was not enough to delve into the institutions that motivated and organized them, but to look directly at the people who had committed the crimes. If we could feel a connection with them, if we could understand what made them do what they did, we would have the psychological and historical insight to prevent the rise of Nazism again.
Bauer was outraged at the fact that despite the success of the war crimes tribunals, hundreds of thousands of Nazis were consciously being overlooked by the German government, and were thus able to find their way back into society, some even holding national leadership. positions. He was determined to bring them to justice.
Author Jack Fairweather tells us this story in great detail and with the deft pen of a mystery novelist. He studied thousands of pages of speeches and interviews, including legal writings that Bauer left behind, and added what he had learned to the unpublished papers and correspondence in Bauer’s family archives. In addition, he was able to access newly released material from international archives from numerous countries, including Austria, Israel, Poland and the US, and thus Fairweather was able to access information on war crimes that had never been developed before.
Bauer died before achieving some of his goals, but he was masterful in exposing the pockets of shame and silence that persisted within German families well past the end of the war. His work began to expunge Nazism from German culture by forcing people confront their past.
Fairweather is a celebrated author and a former correspondent for The Washington Post and The Daily Telegraph. His book, The Prosecutor, illuminates Fritz Bauer’s courageous work and elevates this German Jewish judge to the level of a national hero.
Linda F. Burghardt is a New York-based journalist and author who has contributed commentary, breaking news, and features to major newspapers across the U.S., in addition to having three non-fiction books published. She writes frequently on Jewish topics and is now serving as Scholar-in-Residence at the Holocaust Memorial & Tolerance Center of Nassau County.
