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The hall of the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Centre was already full half an hour before the start of the event when historian Irmtrud Wojak presented the English-language edition of her book for the first time in the USA.
„I’m so glad that we had good attendance and a fully engaged audience. The presentation was excellent. Bauer’s thoughts on treason will stay with me,“ emphasised Lillian Polus Gerstner, Director of Public Programs, after the event.
It was not least the recent feature films that drew attention to the lawyer Fritz Bauer, who found the Nazi criminal Eichmann and brought Auschwitz to justice. The historian and director of the non-profit BUXUS STIFTUNG GmbH corrected the image of the allegedly obsessed homosexual Nazi hunter and workaholic who is said to have committed suicide, which was created by the latest German feature films about the fighter for human rights, among other things. There are no historical sources for this, but rather contemporary interpretations that unfortunately play up to racist and anti-Semitic tendencies.
The humanist and social thinker Fritz Bauer, himself a survivor of the Holocaust, whose family history was shaped by the history of Jewish emancipation and who fought against injustice, social injustice and the abuse of state power throughout his life, emerged impressively instead.
The audience was spellbound and more than interested. The biographer was particularly moved after the event when she met a cousin of Fritz Bauer who wanted to get in touch with her family in Denmark and Sweden, where Fritz Bauer found refuge during the Nazi regime.