THE PROSECUTOR

Disturbing insights into a bygone era.

Fritz Bauer (1903-1968) was a judge in 1933 when Hitler came to power. Dismissed and imprisoned—he was Jewish—he fled the country and survived. Journalist Fairweather, author of The Volunteer: One Man, an Underground Army, and the Secret Mission to Destroy Auschwitz, writes that Bauer returned to the new national government in 1948 as the attorney general of the city of Braunschweig. West Germany’s first leader, Konrad Adenauer, disliked Nazis but, like many Germans, had no interest in exploring their crimes. His priority was rebuilding his nation, restoring it to respected status as a free-world power. The legal system included many former Nazis. Fairweather reminds readers that full details of the Holocaust did not emerge until the 1950s, but Bauer knew. Unfortunately, with no laws against mass murder, murder in Germany remained a crime against an individual that required witnesses and hard evidence. His department prosecuted many former Nazis for loathsome crimes, with spotty success. Learning of Adolf Eichmann’s address in Argentina in 1957 and aware that telling his government would be pointless, he informed the Israelis. Perhaps his major effort was the 1963-64 trial of 24 midlevel Auschwitz workers who had returned to respectable employment after the war. As usual, Bauer’s goal of demonstrating that horrific atrocities were the work of ordinary, patriotic German citizens did not turn out as planned. Some defendants were convicted of murder, some of lesser offenses; five were acquitted. None showed remorse. On the plus side, horrific testimony from victims made an impression, and by his death German schools and scholars were paying more attention to Nazi crimes. Bauer’s other crusade—opposing laws against homosexuality—succeeded. This century, however, has seen Nazism revive in the form of hypernationalistic, authoritarian, right-wing movements in Germany and across the world.

Stirring revelations of an unsung hero of postwar Germany.