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 brought together 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.
Jack Fairweather is an award-winning and bestselling British writer and journalist. His last book, The Volunteer , won the Costa Book Prize, and was a #1 Sunday Times bestseller, hailed as a modern classic, and compared to Schindler’s List. His newest release, The Prosecutor, will be the subject of this book talk.
This event is online only. Meeting links will be sent to ticket holders before the event.