Rosmus—whose work as a student tracing WWII-era crimes in Passau, her Bavarian hometown, was portrayed in the movie The Nasty Girl
—again trains her determined, accusatory gaze on the conduct of Germans during WWII and after. In the most revelatory part of the book, she details "the mass murder of 'offspring of alien descent.' " Female workers from Eastern Europe were imported into Passau's environs as slave laborers. When they became pregnant (often from rape), some were forced to have abortions. When others gave birth, the babies were taken and either murdered or neglected until they died, and then buried in unmarked graves. Rosmus also explores an unacknowledged local concentration camp and massacres of Russian POWs in the final days of the war. Rosmus's work is distinguished by her tenacity in digging up the history and in showing how most local residents were willing to ignore ugly facts both during and after the war. For example, the doctor responsible for some of the slave laborers' abortions was fined in a German court as an accomplice to wartime atrocities, but only a few years later she was able to set up a private practice. Rosmus, who now lives in Maryland, is not sensationalist: ably translated, her work is just old-fashioned, solid history. Agent, Fifi Oscard.
(Oct.)
