Fritz Bauer and the Cold War Battle to Remember Auschwitz - Instytut Pileckiego

A lecture delivered as part of a special commemorative program marking the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation.

Lecture: Fritz Bauer and the Cold War Battle to Remember Auschwitz
29.01. 18.30 | Pariser Platz 4A, 10117 Berlin
Registration: https://forms.gle/ByZm9UZpNXVAve9a8

Imagine a history of the twentieth century in which the Holocaust is only a footnote to the Second World War. Where the encyclopaedia entry for Auschwitz describes the flourishing chemical industry in the nearby town but omits the gas chambers. Where school textbooks describe Hitler as “gifted in a variety of ways” and conclude that “no more than a hundred people knew about it.” This isn’t an abstract thought experiment, but West Germany in the years following Hitler’s defeat, when the Holocaust was all but forgotten and the Allies sanctioned the return of millions of former Nazis to forge a new country to serve as a bulwark against Communism. It was time, in the words of West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in 1949, to “let bygones be bygones.” 

This is the world to which the Jewish lawyer Fritz Bauer returned to from exile on a mission to ensure that Germany and world would not forget. At the height of the Cold War he forged a relationship with the Polish judge Jan Sehn and a small band of survivors and activists to smuggle evidence of Nazi crimes in Auschwitz across the Iron Curtain. The result was a trial that ensured the camp would never be forgotten. As the world observes the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation, join international bestselling author Jack Fairweather to discuss the extraordinary Cold War battle to lodge the Holocaust in our collective conscience.

During his lecture, Jack Fairweather will give an exclusive preview of his latest book ‘The Prosecutor’ which will be published on 25 February 2025.

About the book: From the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of The Volunteer, the powerful 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.

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.

Jack Fairweather is the bestselling author of The Volunteer, the Costa Prize winning account of a Polish underground officer who volunteered to report on Nazi crimes in Auschwitz. The book has been translated into 25 languages and forms the basis of the exhibition "Witold Pilecki. In Resistance to Hitler and Stalin" in Berlin. He has served as the Daily Telegraph’s Baghdad bureau chief, and as a video journalist for the Washington Post in Afghanistan. His war coverage has won a British Press Award and an Overseas Press Club award citation. He divides his time between the UK and Vermont.