Fritz Bauer 1903-1968. A Biography

"Resistance is the refusal to follow an unjust order or law, it is the help that is given to the victims of an evil state." The lawyer Fritz Bauer knew what he was talking about. Himself a resistance fighter and exile, as a victim of the Nazi regime he brought the crimes in Auschwitz, the crimes of the Wehrmacht, the Nazi justice system and Nazi medicine to court. Hostility and death threats therefore followed him until his death. Bauer consistently spoke of the millions of Nazi perpetrators and opposed the trivializing legal construction of complicity. Denazification and democratization were Bauer's main concerns after twelve years of Nazi rule.

Wouldn't everyone have been entitled, even obliged, to help the persecuted? After so much violence and inhumanity, Bauer wanted to ensure that human rights were given the acceptance they deserved. Tolerance should become recognition of others. He stood on the side of the weakest in society, fighting for the rights of prisoners as well as those of the persecuted. Criminal law reform and a humane penal system were his main concerns, and resocialization was his goal.

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