The Prosecutor: How one gay man brought the Nazis to justice

On March 4, 2025, Pride in Leadership hosted an online conversation with award-winning author Jack Fairweather about his latest book, “The Prosecutor.” The event, hosted by Matt Haworth, explored the remarkable story of German Fritz Bauer, a gay Jewish judge who returned to post-war Germany to prosecute Nazi war criminals and force his nation to confront its complicity in the Holocaust.

Fritz Bauer’s Return to Germany

Jack painted a powerful picture of Fritz Bauer returning to Germany in 1949 at age 45 – a gay, Jewish socialist who had survived Nazi persecution and was coming back to serve as Attorney General in Braunschweig. Bauer returned to a West Germany where:

• The Holocaust was treated as merely a footnote to World War II
• School textbooks described Hitler as “gifted in a variety of ways”
• West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer advocated to “let bygones be bygones”
• Former Nazis had been reintegrated into society, including Hans Globke, Adenauer’s chief of staff who had helped implement the Nuremberg race laws.

Bauer’s radical mission

Bauer had a radical vision: to use the justice system to force a national reckoning with Germany’s Nazi past. While the Allies believed justice had been served through the Nuremberg trials, Bauer recognised that the vast scale of complicity remained unaddressed:

• 8.5 million Germans joined the Nazi party
• 250,000 had served in the SS that operated death camps
• Most perpetrators had simply slipped back into German society

Bauer faced immense challenges pursuing this mission while hiding his own identities, which would have made him a target for vilification or worse.

The hunt for Eichmann

Fairweather recounted Bauer’s extraordinary pursuit of Adolf Eichmann, who had organised the transport of millions of Jews to death camps. Unable to trust the West German authorities who might tip off Eichmann, Bauer relied on a blind Holocaust survivor and his 14-year-old daughter (Sylvie) to help track Eichmann in Buenos Aires, and enlisted Mossad’s help to capture Eichmann and bring him to Jerusalem for trial.

The 1961 Eichmann trial proved transformative, giving Holocaust survivors a platform to speak and cutting through public indifference about Nazi crimes.

The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial

In 1963, Bauer conceived of a trial that would put Auschwitz itself at the centre of proceedings, focusing not on high-level officials but on ordinary Germans who operated the camp:

• 22 defendants were chosen for their “ordinariness” so Germans would recognise themselves
• The trial featured testimony from 350 witnesses from a dozen countries
• Bauer arranged for the Western press to visit Auschwitz for the first time, bringing images of the death camp to global attention
• The trial helped introduce the Holocaust into school curricula and national monuments

Bauer’s personal journey

Fairweather’s research uncovered Bauer’s hidden personal life, including his time in Denmark (1936-1940) where homosexuality was legal and he could live openly as a gay man, and his relationship with Paul Wagner, who later helped save Bauer and his family when the Nazis invaded Denmark in 1940.

The continuing battle against denialism

Fairweather emphasised that Bauer’s story remains urgently relevant today, as recent German elections saw one in five voters supporting the far-right, which criticises what it calls the “guilt cult” surrounding the Holocaust, and Holocaust denial is again on the rise. In addition, many perpetrators’ families continue to deny their relatives’ culpability. Each generation must struggle with the Nazi crimes, as democracy’s strength lies in “our personal commitment to confront the past”

Reflections on the book’s importance

The event highlighted how Fairweather’s book reveals not just a history of Nazi prosecution, but a “history of a history” – how the Holocaust was established in our global conscience through the efforts of individuals like Bauer. At a time when far-right movements are gaining strength globally, Bauer’s story serves as both inspiration and warning.

Haworth noted the importance of acknowledging Bauer’s gay identity, which has often been erased in previous accounts that simply stated he “never had a family.” The intersectionality of Bauer’s identity as both gay and Jewish makes his story particularly powerful for building solidarity among different communities facing threats today.

As Fairweather concluded, Bauer’s legacy reminds us that “words have consequences” and that we must continually reconnect with the reality of historical atrocities to “hold on to our humanity.”

You can read more about Jack, and his work, on his website here:
https://www.jackfairweather.com

You can buy a copy of The Prosecutor from our friends at Queer Lit: https://www.queerlit.co.uk/products/the-prosecutor