The Prosecutor
One Man's Battle to Bring Nazis to Justice
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The “gripping” (The New York Times) true story of a Jewish lawyer who returned to Germany after World War II to prosecute war crimes, only to find himself pitted against a nation determined to bury the past—from the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of The Volunteer.
“Compulsively readable . . . with liberal democracies once more imperiled and indifference to the Holocaust stupefyingly widespread, The Prosecutor could hardly be more timely.”—Financial Times
At the end of the Nuremberg trial in 1946, some of the greatest war criminals in history were sentenced to death, but hundreds of thousands of Nazi murderers and collaborators remained at large. The Allies were ready to overlook their pasts as the Cold War began, and the horrors of the Holocaust were in danger of being forgotten.
In The Prosecutor, Jack Fairweather brings to life the remarkable story of Fritz Bauer, a gay, Jewish judge from Stuttgart who survived the Nazis and made it his mission to force his countrymen to confront their complicity in the genocide. In this deeply researched book, Fairweather draws on unpublished family papers, newly declassified German records, and exclusive interviews to immerse readers in the shadowy, unfamiliar world of postwar West Germany where those who implemented genocide run the country, the CIA is funding Hitler’s former spy-ring in the east, and Nazi-era anti-gay laws are strictly enforced. But once Bauer landed on the trail of Adolf Eichmann, he wouldn’t be intimidated. His journey took him deep into the dark heart of West Germany, where his fight for justice would set him against his own government and a network of former Nazis and spies bent on silencing him.
In a time when the history of the Holocaust is taken for granted, The Prosecutor reveals the courtroom battles that were fought to establish its legacy and the personal cost of speaking out. The result is a searing portrait of a nation emerging from the ruins of fascism and one man’s courage in forcing his people—and the world—to face the truth.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The fight to keep the Holocaust from being willfully forgotten is a flame that burns brightly in Jack Fairweather’s tense recounting. Fritz Bauer, a gay, Jewish judge who narrowly escaped Nazi Germany, returned to his homeland after the war feeling hopeful that Germans would take accountability for their complicity in Hitler’s atrocities. What he found instead was a government and judiciary still driven by former Nazis and bent on letting “bygones be bygones.” Fairweather vividly depicts the frustration of a man watching his society continue to capitulate to the Nazis—even after their defeat. Bauer’s pursuit of justice led to unending conflict and, eventually, a partnership with Israel. We were chilled to learn not just about how quickly Germany fell to Nazism but also how uninterested the rest of the world was in learning about the Holocaust after the war. The Prosecutor is a vital lesson about fighting against the path of least resistance.
