Researcher for Penguin Random House Cold War narrative non-fiction project
Outline of work
Task 1 – Background
Working to an initial book outline that highlights main characters and narrative threads, read up on main English and German secondary sources, making notes on primary sources to explore; fact-checking outline; adding details to scenes/character descriptions
Task 2 – Bibliography
Prepare comprehensive overview of source material relating to key character/narrative threads
Task 3 – Active research
Conduct oral interviews; gather material in archives; log, record research material; collaborate with team researchers
Task 4 – Writing
Prepare short topic pieces for incorporation in 1st draft
Task 5 – Fact-check
Fact-check final draft, add notes, prepare bibliography
Your expectations of me
- A work contract for agreed salary/time frame plus travel expenses
- An initial book outline, chapter breakdown
- Clear, daily instruction/work-flow app to manage time/tasks
- Weekly planning sessions
- Access to book’s architecture via Evernote
- Feedback on research/writing
This is what I expect you to get out of it
- Opportunity to work on potential best-selling book that can change the way in post-war Germany is viewed
- Full acknowledgment of role in book
- Access to unexplored archives for use in your future research
- First-hand experience of working with professional history/exposure to world of publishing
- Research/workflow techniques and tips
- Guidance on improving writing style
Desired skills and experience
- Ability to research independently in archives, note-take and summarize
- Thoroughness and ability to explore every angle
- Eye for detail
- Judgement in assessing value of material both in terms of historical relevance and role in narrative
- Initiative in tackling problems
- Desire to break new ground
- Responsiveness/ability to work to deadlines and in a mission-drive team
- Simple writing style
- English and Hebrew language essential, German useful
About the employer
I am an award-winning historian and former war correspondent for the Washington Post and the Daily Telegraph. My book The Volunteer was an international bestseller that has been translated into over twenty languages. Penguin Random House is the top publisher for narrative non-fiction.
Abstract for The Prosecutor
The Prosecutor is a work of narrative nonfiction for Penguin Random House USA that will bring the story of the German Jewish lawyer Fritz Bauer to a wide audience. Bauer made history by arranging for Adolf Eichmann’s capture and putting the perpetrators of Auschwitz on trial – yet his story is little known outside Germany. The book, to be published in 2023, will be based on extensive archival research, as well as newly declassified intelligence files, unpublished family papers, and exclusive interviews with witnesses and their descendants.
I first came across Bauer’s story while researching The Volunteer, my bestselling biography of Polish resistance fighter Witold Pilecki that’s been translated into 25 languages and forms the basis of a major Berlin exhibition. Pilecki smuggled himself into Auschwitz in order to report on Nazi crimes but his pleas for action were ignored by the Allies. He was executed in 1948 for opposing the Communist takeover of Poland, an injustice compounded by the fact that the majority of Auschwitz’s perpetrators were able to lead comfortable postwar lives. That is, until Bauer started tracking them down. Here was a story I knew needed to be told.
The Nazis had many reasons to kill Bauer in the 1930s: he was a gay, Jewish, and a prominent critic of Hitler in the 1930s. But Bauer evaded the regime’s clutches by fleeing to Denmark, and then, after the war, made it his mission to seek justice. Hitler’s defeat should have meant the end of Nazism. And yet as Bauer discovered upon becoming the attorney general of the small city of Braunschweig in 1949, thousands of perpetrators remained at large, shielded by a society that would rather forget the past, and the CIA, which was prepared to use war criminals in the fight against Communism. Holocaust denial and Nazi-inspired political groups were on the rise. Bauer realized that if he wanted justice, he would have to do more than just put former Nazis in the dock. He needed to expose the rotten foundations on which his country was being built.
As we lose the generation that first confronted the Holocaust, I believe it’s essential to find new ways to share their experience. Bauer’s story of courage and defiance is one of the most compelling I’ve encountered. The trials he staged between 1949 and 1968 ensured the victims’ voices could finally be heard. In doing so, he shaped who we are today and how we think about our darkest hour.