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The DEFA Film Library will host bestselling author Jack Fairweather to discuss his latest book, “The Prosecutor: One Man’s Battle to Bring Nazis to Justice,” a biography about West German prosecutor and judge Fritz Bauer, who initiated the 1963 Auschwitz Trial, on April 17 at 5 p.m. at the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies, 758 North Pleasant St.

The event is organized by Ester Gonzáles Martin, a German studies doctoral student and former member of the DEFA team. Gonzáles Martin supported the book’s publication with her research in The Carlos Foth Papers at Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) at UMass Amherst.

DEFA filmmaker Jörg Foth donated the collection, which encompasses case files and documents from his father Carlos Foth, the East German public prosecutor and head of the International Department at the General Prosecutor’s Office.

Carlos Foth was a key player in the legal effort to investigate and bring Nazi war criminals to trial. He was also in contact with Bauer in January 1961, when he handed over copies of 55 original documents that proved the involvement of West German Secretary of State Hans Globke in the Holocaust.

More information about Fairweather’s book, which was released in February of this year, can be found on his website.

The event is sponsored by German and Scandinavian Studies, the DEFA Film Library, and the Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies at UMass Amherst.