The Prosecutor by Jack Fairweather is the true story of Fritz Bauer (1903-1968) who was a German Jew who set about trying to bring the perpetrators of evil to justice after World War II. He was relentless in his pursuit.
At the end of World War II, Bauer estimated that eight million Germans had belonged o the Nazi party and two hundred and fifty thousand served in the SS. Many of the mass murderers and perpetrators of evil, either fled Germany or seamlessly blended back into society at the end of the war. “Few wanted to admit that fighting for Hitler was wrong.” Attitudes in the older generation, frighteningly, persisted into the 1960’s. Only with education, did the attitudes of subsequent generations of Germans change, as they admitted that the Holocaust did happen. Change started with the youth.
Jack Fairweather has clearly and methodically researched the life of Fritz Bauer, who was a good man who refused to stand by and do nothing. Along with others, including Simon Wiesenthal, Bauer helped to bring Adolf Eichmann to justice.
Bauer helped to put individuals on trial, as well as the human machinery that was Auschwitz. He introduced Auschwitz to the world through the horrifying testimonies of those who were there. The judges and others from the court, actually toured Auschwitz to see the site of the greatest mass murders in history, saying, “you need to see it… only then can you imagine the magnitude of the crime.”
The author has written a very comprehensive account of a time of pure evil. Words are just too inadequate to describe the horrors.
The Prosecutor is a harrowing, but necessary read. May we never forget the six million innocents who perished.
I received a free copy via Net Galley. A favourable review was not required. All opinions are my own.

This book made me so proud and yet so angry too at the barriers and obstacles Fritz Bauer had to try and overcome in order to bring former Nazis to justice in a Germany that after the initial Nuremberg trials wanted to let bygones be bygones.

Bauer was fighting against a country largely run, governed and administered by unpunished former Nazis who unsurprisingly did everything in their power to hinder his efforts.

Bauer was determined never to give up and his persistence left me awestruck as he relentlessly pursued the likes of Eichmann and other monsters of the Third Reich.

This book is wonderfully well researched and written and manages to keep an objective tone throughout for which the author should be congratulated given the emotive subject matter.

An important book which shines a light on a hero.