Against the Stream: Growing Up Where Hitler Used to Live

by Anna Rosmus, Imogen Von Tannenberg (Translator)

This text tells the story of a committed young woman who overcame fierce resistance to discover and make public the suppressed deeds of her fellow citizens. First published as part of Germany's What I Think series, this memoir choronicles the intense backlash Rosmus faced in the form of censorship, lawsuits and death threats. Rosmus's story, which inspired the 1990 Academy Award-nominated film The Nasty Girl, also follows her attempts to bring home Passau's expelled Jews and few Holocaust survivors, and to commemorate the forgotten Jews of Passau. Her story recounts her dedication to uncovering anti-Semitism and to fight neo-Nazis and Germany's extreme right.

160 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2002

About the author

Anna Elisabeth Rosmus, from Passau, Germany, is an author, human rights activist, and the real-life heroine of the Academy Award–nominated film The Nasty Girl (1990). For thirty-three years she has dedicated her life to uncovering the Nazi past of her hometown in Bavaria and to combating neo-Nazis in Germany. The winner of numerous awards for her efforts in Europe, the Middle East, and North America, Rosmus represents to many the legacy of the Holocaust in memory, education, and action in the continuing struggle against bigotry and anti-Semitism.

Reviews

[Laura]

An astounding account of the moral courage of a contemporary German historian/journalist to come to terms with the fact that her hometown of Pasau, Germany was also central in the boyhood of Hitler and that it also played a key role in the nurturing of SS officers in the Third Reich. Besides this, Passau was also the nearest town to some of the most notorious sub-camps and killings toward the end of WWII.
Ms. Rosmus makes many heroic attempts to convince key contemporary Passau politicians and city leaders, many of whom were personally involved in the atrocities of the war, of the need to come to terms with the role their town played during WWII, largely to no avail. Eventually, however, she is able to arrange for a 50th anniversary commemoration in Passau of American and Russian veteran soldier liberators of the death camps along with many of those survivors of the camps who still survived at that time. This book is the story of her journey that finally resulted in this climactic commemoration.

[Pam]

After visiting Passau, I thought it was a very picturesque and interesting town in Germany. We were there at Christmas time, so we visited the Christmas market and the Cathedral for an organ concert. So in hoping to learn more about the town, I learned about Anna Rosmus book from my daughter and put it on my list to read. It is hard to believe that anyone born in 1960 would not have some idea of what went on in Germany during the years of Nazi rule. What an eye opener that was. This is a woman whose perseverance is admirable. She is relenting and that trait can be difficult to appreciate. But the enormity of what went on in Germany during those years is so hard to comprehend and her calls for simple apology and acknowledgment of what happened seem like the right thing to do. How difficult that turned out to be. I am glad that people like Anna Rosmus exist and continue to hold governments and religious communities and towns to a moral standard of decency that we would expect of these institutions.