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East West Street: On the Origins of "Genocide" and "Crimes Against Humanity"
A profound and profoundly important book—a moving personal detective story, an uncovering of secret pasts, and a book that explores the creation and development of world-changing legal concepts that came about as a result of the unprecedented atrocities of Hitler’s Third Reich.
East West Street looks at the personal and intellectual evolution of the two men who simultaneously originated the ideas of “genocide” and “crimes against humanity,” both of whom, not knowing the other, studied at the same university with the same professors, in a city little known today that was a major cultural center of Europe, “the little Paris of Ukraine,” a city variously called Lemberg, Lwów, Lvov, or Lviv. It begins in 2010 and moves backward and forward in time, from the present day to twentieth-century Poland, France, Germany, England, and America, ending in the courtroom of the Palace of Justice at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg in 1945. The book opens with the author being invited to give a lecture on genocide and crimes against humanity at Lviv University, welcomed as the first international law academic to give a lecture there on such subjects in fifty years. Sands accepted the invitation with the intent of learning about the extraordinary city with its rich cultural and intellectual life, home to his maternal grandfather, a Galician Jew who had been born there a century before and who’d moved to Vienna at the outbreak of the First World War, married, had a child (the author’s mother), and who then had moved to Paris after the German annexation of Austria in 1938. It was a life that had been shrouded in secrecy, with many questions not to be asked and fewer answers offered if they were. As the author uncovered, clue by clue, the deliberately obscured story of his grandfather’s mysterious life and of his flight first to Vienna and then to Paris, and of his mother’s journey as a child surviving Nazi occupation, Sands searched further into the history of the city of Lemberg and realized that his own field of humanitarian law had been forged by two men—Rafael Lemkin and Hersch Lauterpacht—each of whom had studied law at Lviv University in the city of his grandfather’s birth, each of whom had come to be considered the finest international legal mind of the twentieth century, each considered to be the father of the modern human rights movement, and each, at parallel times, forging diametrically opposite, revolutionary concepts of humanitarian law that had changed the world. In this extraordinary and resonant book, Sands looks at who these two very private men were, and at how and why, coming from similar Jewish backgrounds and the same city, studying at the same university, each developed the theory he did, showing how each man dedicated this period of his life to having his legal concept—“genocide” and “crimes against humanity”—as a centerpiece for the prosecution of Nazi war criminals. And the author writes of a third man, Hans Frank, Hitler’s personal lawyer, a Nazi from the earliest days who had destroyed so many lives, friend of Richard Strauss, collector of paintings by Leonardo da Vinci. Frank oversaw the ghetto in Lemberg in Poland in August 1942, in which the entire large Jewish population of the area had been confined on penalty of death. Frank, who was instrumental in the construction of concentration camps nearby and, weeks after becoming governor general of Nazi-occupied Poland, ordered the transfer of 133,000 men, women, and children to the death camps. Sands brilliantly writes of how all three men came together, in October 1945 in Nuremberg—Rafael Lemkin; Hersch Lauterpacht; and in the dock at the Palace of Justice, with the twenty other defendants of the Nazi high command, prisoner number 7, Hans Frank, who had overseen the extermination of more than a million Jews of Galicia and Lemberg, among them, the families of the author’s grandfather as well as those of Lemkin and Lauterpacht. A book that changes the way we look at the world, at our understanding of history and how civilization has tried to cope with mass murder. Powerful; moving; tender; a revelation.
East West Street looks at the personal and intellectual evolution of the two men who simultaneously originated the ideas of “genocide” and “crimes against humanity,” both of whom, not knowing the other, studied at the same university with the same professors, in a city little known today that was a major cultural center of Europe, “the little Paris of Ukraine,” a city variously called Lemberg, Lwów, Lvov, or Lviv. It begins in 2010 and moves backward and forward in time, from the present day to twentieth-century Poland, France, Germany, England, and America, ending in the courtroom of the Palace of Justice at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg in 1945. The book opens with the author being invited to give a lecture on genocide and crimes against humanity at Lviv University, welcomed as the first international law academic to give a lecture there on such subjects in fifty years. Sands accepted the invitation with the intent of learning about the extraordinary city with its rich cultural and intellectual life, home to his maternal grandfather, a Galician Jew who had been born there a century before and who’d moved to Vienna at the outbreak of the First World War, married, had a child (the author’s mother), and who then had moved to Paris after the German annexation of Austria in 1938. It was a life that had been shrouded in secrecy, with many questions not to be asked and fewer answers offered if they were. As the author uncovered, clue by clue, the deliberately obscured story of his grandfather’s mysterious life and of his flight first to Vienna and then to Paris, and of his mother’s journey as a child surviving Nazi occupation, Sands searched further into the history of the city of Lemberg and realized that his own field of humanitarian law had been forged by two men—Rafael Lemkin and Hersch Lauterpacht—each of whom had studied law at Lviv University in the city of his grandfather’s birth, each of whom had come to be considered the finest international legal mind of the twentieth century, each considered to be the father of the modern human rights movement, and each, at parallel times, forging diametrically opposite, revolutionary concepts of humanitarian law that had changed the world. In this extraordinary and resonant book, Sands looks at who these two very private men were, and at how and why, coming from similar Jewish backgrounds and the same city, studying at the same university, each developed the theory he did, showing how each man dedicated this period of his life to having his legal concept—“genocide” and “crimes against humanity”—as a centerpiece for the prosecution of Nazi war criminals. And the author writes of a third man, Hans Frank, Hitler’s personal lawyer, a Nazi from the earliest days who had destroyed so many lives, friend of Richard Strauss, collector of paintings by Leonardo da Vinci. Frank oversaw the ghetto in Lemberg in Poland in August 1942, in which the entire large Jewish population of the area had been confined on penalty of death. Frank, who was instrumental in the construction of concentration camps nearby and, weeks after becoming governor general of Nazi-occupied Poland, ordered the transfer of 133,000 men, women, and children to the death camps. Sands brilliantly writes of how all three men came together, in October 1945 in Nuremberg—Rafael Lemkin; Hersch Lauterpacht; and in the dock at the Palace of Justice, with the twenty other defendants of the Nazi high command, prisoner number 7, Hans Frank, who had overseen the extermination of more than a million Jews of Galicia and Lemberg, among them, the families of the author’s grandfather as well as those of Lemkin and Lauterpacht. A book that changes the way we look at the world, at our understanding of history and how civilization has tried to cope with mass murder. Powerful; moving; tender; a revelation.
448 pages, Hardcover
First published May 24, 2016
About the author
Philippe Sands
43 books469 followersPhilippe Sands is Professor of Law at University College London and a practicing barrister at Matrix Chambers. He has been involved in many important cases, including Pinochet, Congo, Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Iraq, Guantanamo and the Yazadis. His books include Lawless World and Torture Team. He is a frequent contributor to the Financial Times, Guardian, New York Review of Books and Vanity Fair, makes regular appearances on radio and television, and serves on the boards of English PEN and the Hay Festival.
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April 24, 2020
Unnatural Law
Philippe Sands offers a new theory of law packaged in a new literary genre in East West Street. Call them both 'phenomenological' or, perhaps less pretentiously, 'unnatural' because neither conforms with traditional presumptions in the law or literature. Both the theory and the genre break the rules. Specifically, the content of East West Street implies that the development of law is not a continuous rational process but a lumpy, messy confluence of emotion, sentiment and political in-fighting. From a literary perspective, this new theory demands a congruent mode of expression. Sands has therefore invented a novel, and initially somewhat disconcerting, combination of what might be called 'orthogonal forms', that is genres that are directed along distinct axes in literary space.
On the face of it, the three 'voices' of East West Street sit uneasily with each other. The personal memoir centred on the uncovering of details of the life of Sands's maternal grandfather, Leon, is just that: personal. On its own it would be of little obvious significance beyond Sands's own family. Similarly, the narrowly defined scope of his historical account of the Holocaust, limited mainly to the former Austrian city of Lviv in Galicia, is highly selective and contains little original scholarship or overall interpretation of the disaster. Finally, Sand’s legal commentary on the 1945 Nuremberg War Crimes Trials is schematic and almost exclusively focussed on only two men - Hersch Lauterpacht and Rafael Lemkin - the men who can be held most responsible, and given most credit, for the definition and successful prosecution of two of the specific charges made by the Court, namely Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide. This commentary is even further limited to the prosecution of one man, Hans Frank, the former Nazi Governor of Galicia.
The fact is that Philippe Sands is a leading practitioner of international law, a professor of law at University College London, the author of sixteen other books, writer of stage plays, and winner of numerous literary awards. This pedigree suggests that there is far more to East West Street than a light personal memoir, a fragmentary history and a sketchy commentary. The total is far more than the sum of its parts. The three parts - memoir, history, commentary – are clearly intended to fit together in a particular way. I believe they are meant to lead the reader to a specific point: an existential view of the law itself, quite beyond the issues of his family, the details of Galician atrocities and the prosecution of a single criminal. This view can only be revealed through this sort of innovative, even idiosyncratic, technique. The result is a quite substantive legal treatise but one that discusses the law in an intentionally oblique way and removes it from the constraints imposed by lawyerly expectations.
The use of a comparison, an historical point of departure, is illustrative of the theoretical problem that I think Sands is trying to work through in this combination of forms:
In the year 1209, the first major battle of the so-called Albigensian Crusade was underway at Beziers in the still independent Languedoc. The man in charge was the Abbot Arnaud Aimairic, a Cistercian monk sent by the pope to root out the Cathar heresy which had been developing in the region for the previous two centuries. The attacking troops found a melange of fighters as well as 20,000 or so Cathars and orthodox Catholic non-combatants in the town. The troops on the ground requested orders from HQ about how to deal with the confused situation. The abbot returned a decisive command: "Kill them all; let God sort it out" (Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius).
For this and other meritorious service, the abbot was rewarded with the bishopric of Narbonne by the pope. We in the modern world would almost universally consider the abbot, and the pope, guilty of war crimes. The fact that they, and their contemporaries, did not consider themselves criminals is down to a view of law which has been perennially fashionable, especially during the legal Renaissance of the period before and after the battle: so-called Natural Law Theory.
Natural Law is the idea that there is a 'foundation' for law which can be derived from an inherent, discernible rationality in human nature. Originally a Greek concept, Natural Law developed a Christian theological following that added the strength of divine revelation to support its premises of rationality. Anthropology and theology combined proved for many an unbeatable combination to guide the development of legal philosophy. For some it still does. It is this philosophy that would be defended most articulately by Thomas Aquinas later in the 13th century and delivered to present day legal minds in a number of variants. It is the implicit starting point for most discussions involving human rights and international law.
Natural Law might seem like a pretty solid idea at first glance. It claims that there is a definite rationality in law that can be deduced with some credibility, if not certainty, by analysing the needs of people and heeding the lessons of the past accumulated in ethical tradition and religious scripture. By comparing actual or proposed law with this standard of rational law, it is claimed a definitive critique is possible. Its conceit is that there is something intrinsic in the natural world that justifies and underpins the credibility as well as the direction of development of the law.
Like any rationalist thought, however, the conclusions reached in Natural Law depend primarily on the specific human needs one decides to recognise, and the nuance of the interpretation one might apply to precedents and holy writ. Both the needs and the interpretations are, of course, often, perhaps always, shaped by the desired conclusions of those doing the analysing and interpreting, usually those dominant in society.
To make this point just a bit sharper: Carl Schmitt, a leading Nazi theoretician (and Catholic), taking his intellectual lead from the English Thomas Hobbes, believed the primary human need was competitive survival of one's national group, one's Volk, in a world with limited resources. Schmitt considered Jews literally unnatural because they did not culturally accept this 'obvious' principle. The mere discussion of morality beyond this principle became immoral and was a sign of decadence in line with this starting point for Natural Law. Schmitt's logical conclusion based on the principles of Natural Law: Jews must be eliminated from society.*
So the conclusions of Natural Law applied at Beziers are quite in line with the morality (and interests) of those running the show. The killing of 20,000 or so people was unfortunate to be sure. But in the first instance, this was the consequence of acts committed in the furtherance of the summum bonum, the ultimate good, namely the salvation of souls. These acts were motivated, that is, in the furtherance of an unquestionably, for the participants, virtuous cause: the elimination of heretical beliefs which endanger the achievement of eternal life. Not much different then from the eternal success of the nation favoured by Schmitt.
Secondly, Natural Law has a lot to say about the means used to reach an obviously laudable goal. The primary intention of the pope's troops was the defeat of the armed Cathar resistors. This justified proportionate violence by the attackers. Given the conditions in the town, really the only proportionate means available was mass slaughter. Harm to the non-combatants was what we now call collateral damage, a secondary effect. Secondary effects are not morally decisive in Natural Law, and therefore may be conveniently ignored. And after all the harm done to the innocents would be more than compensated for by divine favour in death. In a sense the abbot was ensuring appropriate justice to all concerned - much like determining a judicial verdict on the roll of divinely inspired dice. As they used to say in computer programming: Garbage in, garbage out. It's all about where you begin.
Today, of course, both the abbot and the pope could be charged with, and probably successfully prosecuted for, Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide. The first because of the wanton disregard for the lives of non-combatants. The second because of the broader intention to eliminate from the Languedoc entirely by whatever means necessary those holding Cathar beliefs. And unlike most other laws, these two could be applied retroactively to the abbot and the pope even though they knew nothing of such laws.
A law-review type of cataloguing of previous cases and judgements from 1209 to 1945 would be unlikely to turn up any consistency in anthropological presumptions nor would it convince many, now or in 1945, of the validity of these two newly articulated crimes. To attempt therefore to connect the atrocities of Beziers with the atrocities of Lviv would yield nothing of legal significance. In a sense, this is where the disciplinary structure of professions breaks down. Some substantial discontinuity is involved that is not covered by the theory of Natural Law.
That Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide were not just unrecognised as criminal acts but commonplace before WWII is incontrovertible: the Belgians in The Congo, the Germans in Southwest Africa, the Turks in Armenian territory, the British in Australia, indeed the Americans on the Great Plains. All these acts had been committed in the living memory of at least some of those on the War Crimes Commission. Relatively liberal governments had been established in each of these offending countries decades before the acts were committed. Yet none of these, or many other, atrocious acts moved the world any closer to a definition of these crimes than had the siege of Beziers. Why not?
The professional criteria of acceptable argument, factual presentation, and continuity of judgment are established in any discipline for what Thomas Kuhn called 'normal science'. Normal science is constituted by routine professional thinking and procedures within a fixed paradigm, a theoretical framework, like Newtonian Physics or Bodily Flux in science and medicine. Or in the law, of established precedent and incremental, connected development. As long as theoretical anamolies - like Newtonian action at a distance or the mechanism of the spread of infection - are ignored, the profession chugs along quite happily, confident that some day anamolies will be resolved within the existing paradigm.
Getting from The Albigensian Crusade to World War II is not a matter of normal legal science, therefore. There is no continuous path of judgments and precedents that lead incrementally from one to the other, filling out the law, as it were, to the full extent of human need. There is a hiatus, a gap, a re-definition of need that must be explained by any complete theory of law. Hence Sands's somewhat bold literary move in not talking to the legal profession in legally acceptable language that is trapped 'within the box' of the dominant legal paradigm. Sands's is abnormal thinking, unnatural therefore to those acculturated to the strictly routine. But necessary to account for the gap.
The charges of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide did not exist in law before the Nuremberg War Trials. They did not come into being, however, because of some new analysis of human nature, or from an innovative interpretation of reason or the discovery of lost precedents, much less the latest biblical exegesis. They came about, on the contrary, because of the entirely non-rational, emotional involvement of individuals, typified by Lauterpacht and Lemkin, who had profoundly personal reasons for pursuing real justice for the crimes of the Holocaust. By real justice I mean in the first place the recognition of the character and severity of the crime committed. No degree of punishment or retribution can compensate for an inadequate description of the criminal act itself. The Holocaust is inadequately described as mass murder.
Sands’s technique for bringing this basic point into narrative focus is brilliant. He uses the city of Lviv as an emotional epicentre of the book. His grandfather Leon, as well as Lauterpacht and Lemkin, were all born and educated in the city and its environs before WWII. The families of all three men were all but wiped out in the Holocaust. Similarly, Hans Frank, the focus of Sands's commentary on the Nuremberg trials, was the Nazi Governor of Lviv and Galicia, and responsible for the 'round-up and disposal' of all Polish and Ukrainian Jews under his control to the death camps.
Sands triangulates on Lviv as the symbol of non-rational, familial affection and human attachment - emotion writ large no matter how unemotionally it is expressed. The emotion emanating from the city, therefore, is the motive force of his entire narrative. The title Itself comes from the road on which both Lauterpacht's and Lemkin's families lived and from which they were forcibly evicted.
Once expressed, these individual emotions find a place within Sands's technique not in an existing concept of law but in the "The community of nations.” This community is not just the group of victorious nations but the constituents of the organisation-in-formation, the United Nations. According to the formula created by Lauterpacht, this community “has in the past claimed and successfully asserted the right to intercede on behalf of the violated rights of man trampled upon by the State in a manner calculated to shock the moral sense of mankind."
This last phrase is from the 1945 International Bill of Rights of Man which was the public charter for the Nuremberg Court. It is noteworthy that it is a statement of social conscience not of anthropology or theology. It is not even a statement of philosophy such as Americans find reassuring in phrases like "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." Nor is it an allusion to historical inevitability such as both Americans and Marxists might use such as "When in the course of human events..." Rather, this phrase from the Declaration is an immediate, and acute, existential cry of outrage emanating from a revulsion about the activities of the Third Reich, a revulsion that has been shaped through experience and recognised generally as such around the world.
Natural Law theorists don't like this conclusion. It implies that the law has no foundation aside from human emotion and public sentiment, that law is 'merely' convention dictated by current mores. Such law has no guarantee except its acceptance, which might be only fleeting. What these theorists neglect is that the crimes in question would never have been 'discovered' much less prosecuted if it weren't for their origin in human emotion and socially formed conscience. We ultimately have no other guarantee except each other. This guarantee, however fragile, is not enhanced in any way by the theoretical opinions of a governing or intellectual elite, which are in any case likely to confirm the legality of whatever contemporary leadership there happens to be. This is just the case as had happened in 1930's Germany.
Sands then goes on to suggest another important aspect of the 'phenomenological unnaturalness' of the new laws employed at Nuremberg: the personal emotions and social conscience that originated and fostered these new concepts were subject to intense and reasonably open political argument leading up to the trials. The politics involved in these arguments are also non-rational even if markedly less emotionally charged. They certainly do not involve anything like analytical deduction from first principles, much less theological claims. Nor, surprisingly, do they depend very much on the personalities involved. There is a sort of objectivity inherent in the debate that in a sense 'purifies' the emotion and conscience thereby removing any trace of possible revenge from the intention to serve justice.
This last phrase might seem an idealistic exaggeration except that it is repeatedly implied in Sands's commentary on Lauterpacht's and Lemkin's roles in getting the two crimes into the Nuremberg indictments. Lauterpacht prevailed in getting Crimes Against Humanity accepted as a charge mainly because the Americans and Russians couldn't agree on the definition of 'atrocities' committed by the Nazis. Lauterpacht's concept and legal definition effectively synthesised the two views into an formula acceptable to both sides.
Furthermore, this synthesis had an effect that went beyond anything that could have been deduced from existing law. Because it included the German victims of persecution in Germany before the war, it was possible to prosecute for crimes committed in the 1930's, particularly but not solely against Jews. It was retroactive not because the acts involved were discovered to be eternally criminal, but because they were found politically indefensible at the time and should be prosecuted even though no law had been in force when the acts were committed.
The story of Lemkin's promotion of the concept of Genocide is also instructive. Lemkin was a scholar who had been assembling evidence in Stockholm about the Nazi grand strategy of annihilation from the 1930's onwards. He was convinced before many others that the incremental ratcheting-up of German persecution had blinded the world from the real intention and ultimate end of the German government. In Washington DC, he argued his case as early as 1941, largely ineffectually. This was due at least in part to his insistent manner and his apparent lack of any political sensitivity. Even Lauterpacht disagreed with him on almost everything except the imperative of justice.
Consequently, Genocide was not included on the Nuremberg indictments until late in the game. Ultimately it was included not because of, but despite, Lemkin's harassment of virtually every official he could access. It was therefore certainly not charm or personal charisma that swayed the judiciary panel. They recognised the need for Genocide as a defined crime in the light of justice not revenge, not even simply of politics. The wisdom of this decision has been vindicated repeatedly - in Rwanda, Serbia, Sudan and Liberia among other places.
I am not an expert in law of any kind, much less the arcana of international criminal law. Nonetheless my rubbing up against legal minds in university life suggests to me that Sands's portrayal of the trajectory of legal development through the confluence of personal emotion, social sentiment, and communal politics, leading to the articulation and prosecution of positive law does constitute an interesting and innovative new theory.
Why then would an acknowledged legal scholar not explicate formally the elements of this theory within the disciplinary genre if the profession? I suspect the answer is that he doesn't want to start or to continue an argument with other legal scholars. Phenomenological exposition in any area is risky because it transgresses disciplinary boundaries and generally causes only confusion if attempted among one's professional peers. It, therefore, doesn't often get very far, and can alienate those who might be subtly sympathetic.
Much more effective, then, to expose the elements of a new theory, without even calling it a new theory, among a non-professional audience. This is what I think Philippe Sands has done, and done exceptionally well indeed. For any infelicities in my interpretation of his intentions I can only apologise to him.
*For more on Schmitt and the origins of his legal philosophy see: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Philippe Sands offers a new theory of law packaged in a new literary genre in East West Street. Call them both 'phenomenological' or, perhaps less pretentiously, 'unnatural' because neither conforms with traditional presumptions in the law or literature. Both the theory and the genre break the rules. Specifically, the content of East West Street implies that the development of law is not a continuous rational process but a lumpy, messy confluence of emotion, sentiment and political in-fighting. From a literary perspective, this new theory demands a congruent mode of expression. Sands has therefore invented a novel, and initially somewhat disconcerting, combination of what might be called 'orthogonal forms', that is genres that are directed along distinct axes in literary space.
On the face of it, the three 'voices' of East West Street sit uneasily with each other. The personal memoir centred on the uncovering of details of the life of Sands's maternal grandfather, Leon, is just that: personal. On its own it would be of little obvious significance beyond Sands's own family. Similarly, the narrowly defined scope of his historical account of the Holocaust, limited mainly to the former Austrian city of Lviv in Galicia, is highly selective and contains little original scholarship or overall interpretation of the disaster. Finally, Sand’s legal commentary on the 1945 Nuremberg War Crimes Trials is schematic and almost exclusively focussed on only two men - Hersch Lauterpacht and Rafael Lemkin - the men who can be held most responsible, and given most credit, for the definition and successful prosecution of two of the specific charges made by the Court, namely Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide. This commentary is even further limited to the prosecution of one man, Hans Frank, the former Nazi Governor of Galicia.
The fact is that Philippe Sands is a leading practitioner of international law, a professor of law at University College London, the author of sixteen other books, writer of stage plays, and winner of numerous literary awards. This pedigree suggests that there is far more to East West Street than a light personal memoir, a fragmentary history and a sketchy commentary. The total is far more than the sum of its parts. The three parts - memoir, history, commentary – are clearly intended to fit together in a particular way. I believe they are meant to lead the reader to a specific point: an existential view of the law itself, quite beyond the issues of his family, the details of Galician atrocities and the prosecution of a single criminal. This view can only be revealed through this sort of innovative, even idiosyncratic, technique. The result is a quite substantive legal treatise but one that discusses the law in an intentionally oblique way and removes it from the constraints imposed by lawyerly expectations.
The use of a comparison, an historical point of departure, is illustrative of the theoretical problem that I think Sands is trying to work through in this combination of forms:
In the year 1209, the first major battle of the so-called Albigensian Crusade was underway at Beziers in the still independent Languedoc. The man in charge was the Abbot Arnaud Aimairic, a Cistercian monk sent by the pope to root out the Cathar heresy which had been developing in the region for the previous two centuries. The attacking troops found a melange of fighters as well as 20,000 or so Cathars and orthodox Catholic non-combatants in the town. The troops on the ground requested orders from HQ about how to deal with the confused situation. The abbot returned a decisive command: "Kill them all; let God sort it out" (Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius).
For this and other meritorious service, the abbot was rewarded with the bishopric of Narbonne by the pope. We in the modern world would almost universally consider the abbot, and the pope, guilty of war crimes. The fact that they, and their contemporaries, did not consider themselves criminals is down to a view of law which has been perennially fashionable, especially during the legal Renaissance of the period before and after the battle: so-called Natural Law Theory.
Natural Law is the idea that there is a 'foundation' for law which can be derived from an inherent, discernible rationality in human nature. Originally a Greek concept, Natural Law developed a Christian theological following that added the strength of divine revelation to support its premises of rationality. Anthropology and theology combined proved for many an unbeatable combination to guide the development of legal philosophy. For some it still does. It is this philosophy that would be defended most articulately by Thomas Aquinas later in the 13th century and delivered to present day legal minds in a number of variants. It is the implicit starting point for most discussions involving human rights and international law.
Natural Law might seem like a pretty solid idea at first glance. It claims that there is a definite rationality in law that can be deduced with some credibility, if not certainty, by analysing the needs of people and heeding the lessons of the past accumulated in ethical tradition and religious scripture. By comparing actual or proposed law with this standard of rational law, it is claimed a definitive critique is possible. Its conceit is that there is something intrinsic in the natural world that justifies and underpins the credibility as well as the direction of development of the law.
Like any rationalist thought, however, the conclusions reached in Natural Law depend primarily on the specific human needs one decides to recognise, and the nuance of the interpretation one might apply to precedents and holy writ. Both the needs and the interpretations are, of course, often, perhaps always, shaped by the desired conclusions of those doing the analysing and interpreting, usually those dominant in society.
To make this point just a bit sharper: Carl Schmitt, a leading Nazi theoretician (and Catholic), taking his intellectual lead from the English Thomas Hobbes, believed the primary human need was competitive survival of one's national group, one's Volk, in a world with limited resources. Schmitt considered Jews literally unnatural because they did not culturally accept this 'obvious' principle. The mere discussion of morality beyond this principle became immoral and was a sign of decadence in line with this starting point for Natural Law. Schmitt's logical conclusion based on the principles of Natural Law: Jews must be eliminated from society.*
So the conclusions of Natural Law applied at Beziers are quite in line with the morality (and interests) of those running the show. The killing of 20,000 or so people was unfortunate to be sure. But in the first instance, this was the consequence of acts committed in the furtherance of the summum bonum, the ultimate good, namely the salvation of souls. These acts were motivated, that is, in the furtherance of an unquestionably, for the participants, virtuous cause: the elimination of heretical beliefs which endanger the achievement of eternal life. Not much different then from the eternal success of the nation favoured by Schmitt.
Secondly, Natural Law has a lot to say about the means used to reach an obviously laudable goal. The primary intention of the pope's troops was the defeat of the armed Cathar resistors. This justified proportionate violence by the attackers. Given the conditions in the town, really the only proportionate means available was mass slaughter. Harm to the non-combatants was what we now call collateral damage, a secondary effect. Secondary effects are not morally decisive in Natural Law, and therefore may be conveniently ignored. And after all the harm done to the innocents would be more than compensated for by divine favour in death. In a sense the abbot was ensuring appropriate justice to all concerned - much like determining a judicial verdict on the roll of divinely inspired dice. As they used to say in computer programming: Garbage in, garbage out. It's all about where you begin.
Today, of course, both the abbot and the pope could be charged with, and probably successfully prosecuted for, Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide. The first because of the wanton disregard for the lives of non-combatants. The second because of the broader intention to eliminate from the Languedoc entirely by whatever means necessary those holding Cathar beliefs. And unlike most other laws, these two could be applied retroactively to the abbot and the pope even though they knew nothing of such laws.
A law-review type of cataloguing of previous cases and judgements from 1209 to 1945 would be unlikely to turn up any consistency in anthropological presumptions nor would it convince many, now or in 1945, of the validity of these two newly articulated crimes. To attempt therefore to connect the atrocities of Beziers with the atrocities of Lviv would yield nothing of legal significance. In a sense, this is where the disciplinary structure of professions breaks down. Some substantial discontinuity is involved that is not covered by the theory of Natural Law.
That Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide were not just unrecognised as criminal acts but commonplace before WWII is incontrovertible: the Belgians in The Congo, the Germans in Southwest Africa, the Turks in Armenian territory, the British in Australia, indeed the Americans on the Great Plains. All these acts had been committed in the living memory of at least some of those on the War Crimes Commission. Relatively liberal governments had been established in each of these offending countries decades before the acts were committed. Yet none of these, or many other, atrocious acts moved the world any closer to a definition of these crimes than had the siege of Beziers. Why not?
The professional criteria of acceptable argument, factual presentation, and continuity of judgment are established in any discipline for what Thomas Kuhn called 'normal science'. Normal science is constituted by routine professional thinking and procedures within a fixed paradigm, a theoretical framework, like Newtonian Physics or Bodily Flux in science and medicine. Or in the law, of established precedent and incremental, connected development. As long as theoretical anamolies - like Newtonian action at a distance or the mechanism of the spread of infection - are ignored, the profession chugs along quite happily, confident that some day anamolies will be resolved within the existing paradigm.
Getting from The Albigensian Crusade to World War II is not a matter of normal legal science, therefore. There is no continuous path of judgments and precedents that lead incrementally from one to the other, filling out the law, as it were, to the full extent of human need. There is a hiatus, a gap, a re-definition of need that must be explained by any complete theory of law. Hence Sands's somewhat bold literary move in not talking to the legal profession in legally acceptable language that is trapped 'within the box' of the dominant legal paradigm. Sands's is abnormal thinking, unnatural therefore to those acculturated to the strictly routine. But necessary to account for the gap.
The charges of Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide did not exist in law before the Nuremberg War Trials. They did not come into being, however, because of some new analysis of human nature, or from an innovative interpretation of reason or the discovery of lost precedents, much less the latest biblical exegesis. They came about, on the contrary, because of the entirely non-rational, emotional involvement of individuals, typified by Lauterpacht and Lemkin, who had profoundly personal reasons for pursuing real justice for the crimes of the Holocaust. By real justice I mean in the first place the recognition of the character and severity of the crime committed. No degree of punishment or retribution can compensate for an inadequate description of the criminal act itself. The Holocaust is inadequately described as mass murder.
Sands’s technique for bringing this basic point into narrative focus is brilliant. He uses the city of Lviv as an emotional epicentre of the book. His grandfather Leon, as well as Lauterpacht and Lemkin, were all born and educated in the city and its environs before WWII. The families of all three men were all but wiped out in the Holocaust. Similarly, Hans Frank, the focus of Sands's commentary on the Nuremberg trials, was the Nazi Governor of Lviv and Galicia, and responsible for the 'round-up and disposal' of all Polish and Ukrainian Jews under his control to the death camps.
Sands triangulates on Lviv as the symbol of non-rational, familial affection and human attachment - emotion writ large no matter how unemotionally it is expressed. The emotion emanating from the city, therefore, is the motive force of his entire narrative. The title Itself comes from the road on which both Lauterpacht's and Lemkin's families lived and from which they were forcibly evicted.
Once expressed, these individual emotions find a place within Sands's technique not in an existing concept of law but in the "The community of nations.” This community is not just the group of victorious nations but the constituents of the organisation-in-formation, the United Nations. According to the formula created by Lauterpacht, this community “has in the past claimed and successfully asserted the right to intercede on behalf of the violated rights of man trampled upon by the State in a manner calculated to shock the moral sense of mankind."
This last phrase is from the 1945 International Bill of Rights of Man which was the public charter for the Nuremberg Court. It is noteworthy that it is a statement of social conscience not of anthropology or theology. It is not even a statement of philosophy such as Americans find reassuring in phrases like "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." Nor is it an allusion to historical inevitability such as both Americans and Marxists might use such as "When in the course of human events..." Rather, this phrase from the Declaration is an immediate, and acute, existential cry of outrage emanating from a revulsion about the activities of the Third Reich, a revulsion that has been shaped through experience and recognised generally as such around the world.
Natural Law theorists don't like this conclusion. It implies that the law has no foundation aside from human emotion and public sentiment, that law is 'merely' convention dictated by current mores. Such law has no guarantee except its acceptance, which might be only fleeting. What these theorists neglect is that the crimes in question would never have been 'discovered' much less prosecuted if it weren't for their origin in human emotion and socially formed conscience. We ultimately have no other guarantee except each other. This guarantee, however fragile, is not enhanced in any way by the theoretical opinions of a governing or intellectual elite, which are in any case likely to confirm the legality of whatever contemporary leadership there happens to be. This is just the case as had happened in 1930's Germany.
Sands then goes on to suggest another important aspect of the 'phenomenological unnaturalness' of the new laws employed at Nuremberg: the personal emotions and social conscience that originated and fostered these new concepts were subject to intense and reasonably open political argument leading up to the trials. The politics involved in these arguments are also non-rational even if markedly less emotionally charged. They certainly do not involve anything like analytical deduction from first principles, much less theological claims. Nor, surprisingly, do they depend very much on the personalities involved. There is a sort of objectivity inherent in the debate that in a sense 'purifies' the emotion and conscience thereby removing any trace of possible revenge from the intention to serve justice.
This last phrase might seem an idealistic exaggeration except that it is repeatedly implied in Sands's commentary on Lauterpacht's and Lemkin's roles in getting the two crimes into the Nuremberg indictments. Lauterpacht prevailed in getting Crimes Against Humanity accepted as a charge mainly because the Americans and Russians couldn't agree on the definition of 'atrocities' committed by the Nazis. Lauterpacht's concept and legal definition effectively synthesised the two views into an formula acceptable to both sides.
Furthermore, this synthesis had an effect that went beyond anything that could have been deduced from existing law. Because it included the German victims of persecution in Germany before the war, it was possible to prosecute for crimes committed in the 1930's, particularly but not solely against Jews. It was retroactive not because the acts involved were discovered to be eternally criminal, but because they were found politically indefensible at the time and should be prosecuted even though no law had been in force when the acts were committed.
The story of Lemkin's promotion of the concept of Genocide is also instructive. Lemkin was a scholar who had been assembling evidence in Stockholm about the Nazi grand strategy of annihilation from the 1930's onwards. He was convinced before many others that the incremental ratcheting-up of German persecution had blinded the world from the real intention and ultimate end of the German government. In Washington DC, he argued his case as early as 1941, largely ineffectually. This was due at least in part to his insistent manner and his apparent lack of any political sensitivity. Even Lauterpacht disagreed with him on almost everything except the imperative of justice.
Consequently, Genocide was not included on the Nuremberg indictments until late in the game. Ultimately it was included not because of, but despite, Lemkin's harassment of virtually every official he could access. It was therefore certainly not charm or personal charisma that swayed the judiciary panel. They recognised the need for Genocide as a defined crime in the light of justice not revenge, not even simply of politics. The wisdom of this decision has been vindicated repeatedly - in Rwanda, Serbia, Sudan and Liberia among other places.
I am not an expert in law of any kind, much less the arcana of international criminal law. Nonetheless my rubbing up against legal minds in university life suggests to me that Sands's portrayal of the trajectory of legal development through the confluence of personal emotion, social sentiment, and communal politics, leading to the articulation and prosecution of positive law does constitute an interesting and innovative new theory.
Why then would an acknowledged legal scholar not explicate formally the elements of this theory within the disciplinary genre if the profession? I suspect the answer is that he doesn't want to start or to continue an argument with other legal scholars. Phenomenological exposition in any area is risky because it transgresses disciplinary boundaries and generally causes only confusion if attempted among one's professional peers. It, therefore, doesn't often get very far, and can alienate those who might be subtly sympathetic.
Much more effective, then, to expose the elements of a new theory, without even calling it a new theory, among a non-professional audience. This is what I think Philippe Sands has done, and done exceptionally well indeed. For any infelicities in my interpretation of his intentions I can only apologise to him.
*For more on Schmitt and the origins of his legal philosophy see: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
April 11, 2018
It was a fascinating read for me and I loved every page turned in this memorable book. Philippe Sands traces the tragic secret history of his own family and we feel as if we are alongside him in his journey.
A personal family history painstainkilly researched and beautifully written by the author and a history of the legal concepts that were devised to deal with the historically unprecedented horrors of the Holocaust. East West Street weaves together a collective narrative which is focused on the interrelated lives of four men, Hersch Lauterpacht, Raphael Lemkin, Hans Frank and Leon Bucholz, the latter, Sands’ maternal grandfather. Two remarkable men from the city of Lviv who's tirelessly worked to have the terms "Crimes against humanity" and "genocide" in the judgement at Nuremberg.
The Author opens this novel with a Note to the Reader. The City of Lviv occupies an important place in this story........ and as we read we learn that The city has changed hands no fewer than eight times between 1914 and 1945 and has been known as Lemberg, Lviv. Lavov, and Lwow. After the Red Army vanquished the Nazis in the summer of 1944 it became part of the Ukraine and was called Lviv, the name that is generally used today. This is a city with a remarkable history, a city that has lost so much to history and war and yet given so much to the world.
If you have an interest in WWII, Family History stories, or The Nuremberg trials then beg, borrow or steal a copy I initally bought an audio copy of this book but thankfully a friend advised me to buy a hard copy of the book as it is packed full of photos, maps and illustrations which they assured me were very important to the story and I quickly purchased a used hardcopy on Amazon (which was signed by the author) and so glad I did as this is a book I will proudly display on my book shelf and already plan on re-reading it. The hard copy did contain so many photos, maps and illustrations that really inhanced this story and brought the characters and places to life.
Philippe Sands is a master at weaving family history with legal history and knowing how to keep the reader interested without the content becoming dry or too complex I had never read a book that that looked at this angle of the War and this was Fresh and rewarding.
This is a book I just loved every minute I spent reading it, I got so much from this book, I was shocked, saddened and above all I was educated which is why this is a 5 star read for me.
I am not going to recommend this to everyone but I do think readers who enjoy Non Fiction books , books about WW II/ Holocaust may be enjoy this book.
A personal family history painstainkilly researched and beautifully written by the author and a history of the legal concepts that were devised to deal with the historically unprecedented horrors of the Holocaust. East West Street weaves together a collective narrative which is focused on the interrelated lives of four men, Hersch Lauterpacht, Raphael Lemkin, Hans Frank and Leon Bucholz, the latter, Sands’ maternal grandfather. Two remarkable men from the city of Lviv who's tirelessly worked to have the terms "Crimes against humanity" and "genocide" in the judgement at Nuremberg.
The Author opens this novel with a Note to the Reader. The City of Lviv occupies an important place in this story........ and as we read we learn that The city has changed hands no fewer than eight times between 1914 and 1945 and has been known as Lemberg, Lviv. Lavov, and Lwow. After the Red Army vanquished the Nazis in the summer of 1944 it became part of the Ukraine and was called Lviv, the name that is generally used today. This is a city with a remarkable history, a city that has lost so much to history and war and yet given so much to the world.
If you have an interest in WWII, Family History stories, or The Nuremberg trials then beg, borrow or steal a copy I initally bought an audio copy of this book but thankfully a friend advised me to buy a hard copy of the book as it is packed full of photos, maps and illustrations which they assured me were very important to the story and I quickly purchased a used hardcopy on Amazon (which was signed by the author) and so glad I did as this is a book I will proudly display on my book shelf and already plan on re-reading it. The hard copy did contain so many photos, maps and illustrations that really inhanced this story and brought the characters and places to life.
Philippe Sands is a master at weaving family history with legal history and knowing how to keep the reader interested without the content becoming dry or too complex I had never read a book that that looked at this angle of the War and this was Fresh and rewarding.
This is a book I just loved every minute I spent reading it, I got so much from this book, I was shocked, saddened and above all I was educated which is why this is a 5 star read for me.
I am not going to recommend this to everyone but I do think readers who enjoy Non Fiction books , books about WW II/ Holocaust may be enjoy this book.
September 9, 2020
Please read the GR book description. Rewriting what is written there is silly. It is informative and thorough and has only a few sentences of a purely laudatory nature aimed at increasing sale of the book. These sentences are easy to spot, for example the last two.
If the detailed GR book description is too much of a pain to read, I doubt you will enjoy the book. The book is much more dense than its description!
East West Street: On the Origins of "Genocide" and "Crimes Against Humanity" combines the biographies of four men (Hersch Lauterpacht, Raphael Lemkin, Hans Frank and the author’s maternal grandfather--Leon Buchholz). It delves into the first two men’s involvement in propagating the legal concepts of genocide and crimes against humanity. Hans Frank was one of the German war criminals tried at Nuremberg, the one responsible for the deaths of the other men’s families. He was Hitler’s personal legal advisor and the Governor-General of the occupied Polish territories where Lemberg / Lwów / Lvov / Lviv is situated, the city the other three men were so intimately tied to.
The four detailed biographies, the Nuremburg trials and how the legal concepts of genocide and crimes against humanity came to be are all extremely interesting. However, the information is presented in different threads which the reader flips back and forth between. The topics covered are in themselves dense, flipping from one to the other makes absorbing the information more difficult than it need have been. Switching back and forth in time and subject matter leads also to repetition of facts.
Originally the author had planned on writing two books—one about his maternal grandfather and one about the two lawyers, the Nuremburg trials and the international legal concepts. His literary agent advised him to combine the two—the detective story, the uncovering of his grandfather’s history was judged to add a personal touch that would hopefully attract a wider group of readers. Perhaps so, but covering so many topics, tying together several threads and jumping back and forth between them, does not add clarity and, as noted above, it leads to repetition.
There are a multitude of individuals to keep track of. The families which the book covers are large. The book would be aided by a list of who is who, a list you could occasionally turn to.
Maybe this is a petitesse, but there is an excessive amount of detail about individuals’ appearances and clothing! The book, on the whole, provides a bit too many unnecessary details.
I listened to the audiobook read by both by the author and David Rintoul. Parts of the text are presented in the first person point of view; these parts are read by the author. It is he who reads about what he has learned about his family. Being himself a renown international lawyer, he speaks clearly, paces what he says to give effect and is adroit in convincing others to his point of view. David Rintoul reads equally well. The narration I have given four stars. This is a dense book of non-fiction, but it is no harder than other such books to listen to. The PDF file that accompanies the audiobook provides maps, notes and source material, but not the photos found in the book.
So maybe it sounds like I do not like this book, but I did. What I learned about the lawyers and the legal concepts was fascinating. The inherent conflict between genocide, with its focus on support of a group, and crimes against humanity, with its focus on support of the individual, is one I had never considered. Yet I do wish the book had been put together in another manner. I like the book a lot but find it only fair to also mention potential stumbling blocks.
Clara's War (4 stars) by Clara Kramer is spoken of in Philippe Sands’ book and it is good to have read it before. There are many books about the situation of the Jews in Galicia during the Second World War. The more you have read the more interesting this book will of course be. Mosaic: A Chronicle of Five Generations (5 stars) by Diane Armstrong is another I highly recommend.
If the detailed GR book description is too much of a pain to read, I doubt you will enjoy the book. The book is much more dense than its description!
East West Street: On the Origins of "Genocide" and "Crimes Against Humanity" combines the biographies of four men (Hersch Lauterpacht, Raphael Lemkin, Hans Frank and the author’s maternal grandfather--Leon Buchholz). It delves into the first two men’s involvement in propagating the legal concepts of genocide and crimes against humanity. Hans Frank was one of the German war criminals tried at Nuremberg, the one responsible for the deaths of the other men’s families. He was Hitler’s personal legal advisor and the Governor-General of the occupied Polish territories where Lemberg / Lwów / Lvov / Lviv is situated, the city the other three men were so intimately tied to.
The four detailed biographies, the Nuremburg trials and how the legal concepts of genocide and crimes against humanity came to be are all extremely interesting. However, the information is presented in different threads which the reader flips back and forth between. The topics covered are in themselves dense, flipping from one to the other makes absorbing the information more difficult than it need have been. Switching back and forth in time and subject matter leads also to repetition of facts.
Originally the author had planned on writing two books—one about his maternal grandfather and one about the two lawyers, the Nuremburg trials and the international legal concepts. His literary agent advised him to combine the two—the detective story, the uncovering of his grandfather’s history was judged to add a personal touch that would hopefully attract a wider group of readers. Perhaps so, but covering so many topics, tying together several threads and jumping back and forth between them, does not add clarity and, as noted above, it leads to repetition.
There are a multitude of individuals to keep track of. The families which the book covers are large. The book would be aided by a list of who is who, a list you could occasionally turn to.
Maybe this is a petitesse, but there is an excessive amount of detail about individuals’ appearances and clothing! The book, on the whole, provides a bit too many unnecessary details.
I listened to the audiobook read by both by the author and David Rintoul. Parts of the text are presented in the first person point of view; these parts are read by the author. It is he who reads about what he has learned about his family. Being himself a renown international lawyer, he speaks clearly, paces what he says to give effect and is adroit in convincing others to his point of view. David Rintoul reads equally well. The narration I have given four stars. This is a dense book of non-fiction, but it is no harder than other such books to listen to. The PDF file that accompanies the audiobook provides maps, notes and source material, but not the photos found in the book.
So maybe it sounds like I do not like this book, but I did. What I learned about the lawyers and the legal concepts was fascinating. The inherent conflict between genocide, with its focus on support of a group, and crimes against humanity, with its focus on support of the individual, is one I had never considered. Yet I do wish the book had been put together in another manner. I like the book a lot but find it only fair to also mention potential stumbling blocks.
Clara's War (4 stars) by Clara Kramer is spoken of in Philippe Sands’ book and it is good to have read it before. There are many books about the situation of the Jews in Galicia during the Second World War. The more you have read the more interesting this book will of course be. Mosaic: A Chronicle of Five Generations (5 stars) by Diane Armstrong is another I highly recommend.
March 19, 2016
In this book , author Phillippe Sands looks back to the city of Lviv, known as Lemberg (as well as many other names) and located variously in the Austro Hungarian Empire, Poland, occupied by the Soviets and, after 1944, part of Ukraine. Lviv, or Lemberg, was home to three men before the Second World War. One was the author’s grandfather, Leon Buchholz. Another was Hersch Lauterpacht, a professor of International Law, born in Zolkiew, near Lemberg in 1877. The last was Rafael Lemkin, a professor and lawyer, born in 1900. Also, linked in to these men’s histories is Hans Frank, who spent two days in Lemberg in August, 1942.
The author’s grandfather never spoke of his time during the war, but Sands carefully unravels those years in this wonderful book and asks the questions he wishes he had asked his grandfather while he was still alive. Why did Leon travel to Paris, from Vienna, without his wife and daughter? Who was the woman who travelled with his, then infant, mother through a war-torn Europe? What happened to his family, left behind in Lemberg? When invited by the law faculty of the University of Lviv to deliver a lecture on his work involving crimes against humanity, he takes the chance to visit his grandfather’s birthplace and investigate the events of that time and of the Neuremberg trials.
He intersperses the stories of his grandfather’s life with those of Lauterpacht and Lemkin. During the Neuremberg trials, Lauterpacht was part of the British prosecution team, while Lemkin was part of the American prosecution team. The two men changed international law, with the idea of ‘War Crimes’ and, in particular, the inclusion of ‘Crimes against Humanity’ and the idea of individual criminal responsibility and the protection of the individual. A new legal order emerged from those war trials; although Lemkin was personally distressed by the silence on ‘genocide’ and the fact that crimes before the war were ignored.
It may sound as though a book on legal issues is dry, but that is certainly not the case. This is a fascinating look at family histories and of how the lives of these two legal experts were entwined with the history of those war years. The coincidences are, at times, quite stunning. For example, while living in Vienna in the early 1920’s, Lauterpacht helped organise a dormitory for Jewish students, which was run by the housekeeper; a young woman called Paula Hitler, whose brother visited in 1921.
Hans Frank was the governor of the territory that included Lemberg. During the Neuremberg trials, both Lauterpacht and Lemkin had family from that area, whose fate was still unknown. For them, these trials could never be a distant, or academic, exercise. On trial, was a man who was responsible for the fate of their own families. During this book, Sands visits the courtroom where Frank was on trial, with his son, Niklas Frank. Of course, Niklas Frank was just a child at the time, but his thoughts are quite moving and you see clearly that there were victims on all sides; as there always are in war. This was a moving, well written and excellent book which I recommend highly. Lastly, I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.
The author’s grandfather never spoke of his time during the war, but Sands carefully unravels those years in this wonderful book and asks the questions he wishes he had asked his grandfather while he was still alive. Why did Leon travel to Paris, from Vienna, without his wife and daughter? Who was the woman who travelled with his, then infant, mother through a war-torn Europe? What happened to his family, left behind in Lemberg? When invited by the law faculty of the University of Lviv to deliver a lecture on his work involving crimes against humanity, he takes the chance to visit his grandfather’s birthplace and investigate the events of that time and of the Neuremberg trials.
He intersperses the stories of his grandfather’s life with those of Lauterpacht and Lemkin. During the Neuremberg trials, Lauterpacht was part of the British prosecution team, while Lemkin was part of the American prosecution team. The two men changed international law, with the idea of ‘War Crimes’ and, in particular, the inclusion of ‘Crimes against Humanity’ and the idea of individual criminal responsibility and the protection of the individual. A new legal order emerged from those war trials; although Lemkin was personally distressed by the silence on ‘genocide’ and the fact that crimes before the war were ignored.
It may sound as though a book on legal issues is dry, but that is certainly not the case. This is a fascinating look at family histories and of how the lives of these two legal experts were entwined with the history of those war years. The coincidences are, at times, quite stunning. For example, while living in Vienna in the early 1920’s, Lauterpacht helped organise a dormitory for Jewish students, which was run by the housekeeper; a young woman called Paula Hitler, whose brother visited in 1921.
Hans Frank was the governor of the territory that included Lemberg. During the Neuremberg trials, both Lauterpacht and Lemkin had family from that area, whose fate was still unknown. For them, these trials could never be a distant, or academic, exercise. On trial, was a man who was responsible for the fate of their own families. During this book, Sands visits the courtroom where Frank was on trial, with his son, Niklas Frank. Of course, Niklas Frank was just a child at the time, but his thoughts are quite moving and you see clearly that there were victims on all sides; as there always are in war. This was a moving, well written and excellent book which I recommend highly. Lastly, I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.
January 19, 2018
The opening quote is from Joseph Roth’s The Wandering Jews (1927):
The little town lies in the middle of a great plain… It begins with little huts and ends with them. After a while the huts are replaced by houses. Streets begin. One runs from north to south, the other from east to west.
The east-west street of the title is where Sands' grandfather, Leon Buchholz, lived with his family in as small village near Lemberg, then in the Austr-Hungarian province of Galicia.
The city we now know as Lviv plays an important role in this story. The complexities of Central European politics in the twentieth century can be traced through its name changes, (Lemberg/ Lwów/ Lvov/ Lemberg again/ Lviv), as ownership shifted eight times between Austria-Hungary (1914), Poland, the Soviets, Germany , and finally Ukraine in 1944.
The two legal philosophers, Hersch Lauterpacht and Rafael Lemkin, lived there, so did Leon Buchholz, Sands’ grandfather, all members of the large Jewish community of the region.
Buchholz suffered the devastating loss of being the only survivor from his extended family, who were amongst the four million Jews murdered in the territory of Poland under the Nazi regime headed by Hans Frank.
There was silence within Sands’ family on what had happened in Europe. Part of this book follows his search for information, with empty spaces at the end of nearly every line, yet he, and we, learn a great deal about them.
Woven through an extraordinary family history, are the stories of the two lawyers from Lemberg – Lauterpacht and Lemkin - and of Hans Frank, Governor-General of the part of the Reich that included Poland and Lemberg, and the man ultimately responsible for millions of Jewish deaths.
Lauterpacht was the man who developed the concept of crimes against humanity, and whose work included that crime in the Nuremberg Statute, under which charges would be laid against war criminals for the first time in the trials of leading Nazis.
Rafael Lemkin, rather than focusing on crimes against individuals, searched Nazi decrees and other documents where he found a pattern of behaviour to which he gave the label ‘genocide’.
Sands writes: ‘These two distinct crimes, with their different emphases on the individual and the group, grew side by side, yet over time genocide emerged on the eyes of many as the crime of crimes, a hierarchy that left a suggestion that killing large numbers of people as individuals was somehow less terrible’.
Sands gives a vivid impression of the two great lawyers – Lauterpacht and Lemkin as individuals, neither of them easy, and both convinced their own view was correct. He relates the emergence of their legal thinking to their experiences of wider knowledge events in Europe under Nazi rule through the 1930s and the war years and skilfully weaves biography with philosophical discussion and examination of the diplomatic (and not so diplomatic) lobbying that preceded and accompanied the Nuremberg Trials.
The Trials, and Hans Frank’s place in them, form the other main strand of the book. Sands has gone into the primary sources, and from them drawn a compelling drama that again places individual behaviours into the wider political context.
Todays’ international laws on human rights arise directly out of the thinking generated by Lauterpacht and Lemkin. The central issue on which they disagreed still remains: is it more important that the law protects you as an individual or you as part of a group? Protect the individual, says Lauterpacht. Protect the group, says Lemkin.
As identity politics and ethnic separatism are on the rise, the issues remain alive and hotly debated.
Sands is as scrupulous as he can be in putting both positions. I can’t help hoping his own view is closer to the crimes against humanity position than that of genocide.
Highly recommended.
The little town lies in the middle of a great plain… It begins with little huts and ends with them. After a while the huts are replaced by houses. Streets begin. One runs from north to south, the other from east to west.
The east-west street of the title is where Sands' grandfather, Leon Buchholz, lived with his family in as small village near Lemberg, then in the Austr-Hungarian province of Galicia.
The city we now know as Lviv plays an important role in this story. The complexities of Central European politics in the twentieth century can be traced through its name changes, (Lemberg/ Lwów/ Lvov/ Lemberg again/ Lviv), as ownership shifted eight times between Austria-Hungary (1914), Poland, the Soviets, Germany , and finally Ukraine in 1944.
The two legal philosophers, Hersch Lauterpacht and Rafael Lemkin, lived there, so did Leon Buchholz, Sands’ grandfather, all members of the large Jewish community of the region.
Buchholz suffered the devastating loss of being the only survivor from his extended family, who were amongst the four million Jews murdered in the territory of Poland under the Nazi regime headed by Hans Frank.
There was silence within Sands’ family on what had happened in Europe. Part of this book follows his search for information, with empty spaces at the end of nearly every line, yet he, and we, learn a great deal about them.
Woven through an extraordinary family history, are the stories of the two lawyers from Lemberg – Lauterpacht and Lemkin - and of Hans Frank, Governor-General of the part of the Reich that included Poland and Lemberg, and the man ultimately responsible for millions of Jewish deaths.
Lauterpacht was the man who developed the concept of crimes against humanity, and whose work included that crime in the Nuremberg Statute, under which charges would be laid against war criminals for the first time in the trials of leading Nazis.
Rafael Lemkin, rather than focusing on crimes against individuals, searched Nazi decrees and other documents where he found a pattern of behaviour to which he gave the label ‘genocide’.
Sands writes: ‘These two distinct crimes, with their different emphases on the individual and the group, grew side by side, yet over time genocide emerged on the eyes of many as the crime of crimes, a hierarchy that left a suggestion that killing large numbers of people as individuals was somehow less terrible’.
Sands gives a vivid impression of the two great lawyers – Lauterpacht and Lemkin as individuals, neither of them easy, and both convinced their own view was correct. He relates the emergence of their legal thinking to their experiences of wider knowledge events in Europe under Nazi rule through the 1930s and the war years and skilfully weaves biography with philosophical discussion and examination of the diplomatic (and not so diplomatic) lobbying that preceded and accompanied the Nuremberg Trials.
The Trials, and Hans Frank’s place in them, form the other main strand of the book. Sands has gone into the primary sources, and from them drawn a compelling drama that again places individual behaviours into the wider political context.
Todays’ international laws on human rights arise directly out of the thinking generated by Lauterpacht and Lemkin. The central issue on which they disagreed still remains: is it more important that the law protects you as an individual or you as part of a group? Protect the individual, says Lauterpacht. Protect the group, says Lemkin.
As identity politics and ethnic separatism are on the rise, the issues remain alive and hotly debated.
Sands is as scrupulous as he can be in putting both positions. I can’t help hoping his own view is closer to the crimes against humanity position than that of genocide.
Highly recommended.
October 14, 2018
This book is about two lawyers, Hersch Lauterpacht (1897 – 1960) and Rafael Lemkin (1900 – 1959), who grew up in what is now called Lviv in the western part of Ukraine. Lviv was formerly called Lemberg, Lvov, or Lwow depending on who had control (Poland, Ukraine, Soviet Union, or Germany during the Second World War).
Both Lauterpacht and Lemkin began their studies of law in Lviv. They were both Jewish and large parts of their families were slaughtered during the Holocaust. This also happened to the authors’ family.
Both Lauterpacht and Lemkin found sanctuary in the West; Lauterpacht in England and Lemkin in the United States (the author’s grandfather lived in Paris).
They were both influential on international law. They realized that countries did little to protect either individuals and/or groups who resided within their boundaries from the nefarious treatment by laws of that country. International law in that era was ineffective to call into question the conduct of governments who passed legislation detrimental to individuals or groups. Sovereignty overrode and took precedence over individual or group rights.
Lauterpacht introduced the term “crimes against humanity” which focused on individual rights. He wanted international law to stipulate that governments and lawmakers could not hide behind their own laws to persecute the individual. International law would prosecute those involved in morally unlawful acts.
Lemkin invented the word “genocide” where an entire group and culture were persecuted. He was largely influenced by the Armenian genocide – and the growing discrimination against Jews in Lviv – and the laws then being made in nearby Germany.
This is an exquisitely written book. The author details the lives of both men and also his own family. He unearths long hidden secrets that were kept in the attic because of the trauma of the Holocaust. He also came to know Niklas Frank, the son of the notorious Hans Frank who held feudal power over Poland (which included Lviv at the time) during World War II. Niklas is deeply anguished by his father.
Lemkin, and more so Lauterpacht, were influential in the Nuremburg trials which set many precedents for international law. Lauterpacht wrote significant parts of the speeches and closing arguments for the British prosecution team at Nuremberg. Lauterpacht was also worried that Lemkin’s concept of genocide would serve to pit group against group and create an endless hatred. They never met. Lauterpacht was more logical; Lemkin more emotional and a loose cannon – and was seen by some of his associates in the U.S. as not a good team player.
This book provides many insights on the development of international law and why we need it. Thankfully it is not given to long wordy legal descriptions. We are given personal insights of the Holocaust with the tragic disappearance of family members and how the few survivors were scarred for the remaining days of their lives, unable to speak of lost parents, sisters, brothers, and relatives.
The author made a documentary, which I saw some time ago, with Niklas Frank called “What Our fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy”.
Both Lauterpacht and Lemkin began their studies of law in Lviv. They were both Jewish and large parts of their families were slaughtered during the Holocaust. This also happened to the authors’ family.
Both Lauterpacht and Lemkin found sanctuary in the West; Lauterpacht in England and Lemkin in the United States (the author’s grandfather lived in Paris).
They were both influential on international law. They realized that countries did little to protect either individuals and/or groups who resided within their boundaries from the nefarious treatment by laws of that country. International law in that era was ineffective to call into question the conduct of governments who passed legislation detrimental to individuals or groups. Sovereignty overrode and took precedence over individual or group rights.
Lauterpacht introduced the term “crimes against humanity” which focused on individual rights. He wanted international law to stipulate that governments and lawmakers could not hide behind their own laws to persecute the individual. International law would prosecute those involved in morally unlawful acts.
Lemkin invented the word “genocide” where an entire group and culture were persecuted. He was largely influenced by the Armenian genocide – and the growing discrimination against Jews in Lviv – and the laws then being made in nearby Germany.
This is an exquisitely written book. The author details the lives of both men and also his own family. He unearths long hidden secrets that were kept in the attic because of the trauma of the Holocaust. He also came to know Niklas Frank, the son of the notorious Hans Frank who held feudal power over Poland (which included Lviv at the time) during World War II. Niklas is deeply anguished by his father.
Lemkin, and more so Lauterpacht, were influential in the Nuremburg trials which set many precedents for international law. Lauterpacht wrote significant parts of the speeches and closing arguments for the British prosecution team at Nuremberg. Lauterpacht was also worried that Lemkin’s concept of genocide would serve to pit group against group and create an endless hatred. They never met. Lauterpacht was more logical; Lemkin more emotional and a loose cannon – and was seen by some of his associates in the U.S. as not a good team player.
This book provides many insights on the development of international law and why we need it. Thankfully it is not given to long wordy legal descriptions. We are given personal insights of the Holocaust with the tragic disappearance of family members and how the few survivors were scarred for the remaining days of their lives, unable to speak of lost parents, sisters, brothers, and relatives.
The author made a documentary, which I saw some time ago, with Niklas Frank called “What Our fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy”.
May 26, 2018
East West Street is an interesting mix of autobiography, history and legal theory. The author’s grandparents were Jews from a town in Eastern Europe that had gone through various names and been part of different countries during the 20th century. Sands tells the story of how his grandparents and mother survived World War II. At the same time, he writes about two legal scholars originally from the same town who developed the concepts of genocide and crimes against humanity as two different ways of criminalizing acts of violence perpetrated against groups. Sands brings in many interesting personal and historical details that make this really interesting and readable despite some of the theoretical content.
I listened to the audio, which I would not recommend because of the density of the narrative — I would have liked to flip back to remind myself who various people were. But, otherwise, I would recommend this to anyone interested in the ways WWII affected real people.
I listened to the audio, which I would not recommend because of the density of the narrative — I would have liked to flip back to remind myself who various people were. But, otherwise, I would recommend this to anyone interested in the ways WWII affected real people.
August 13, 2016
I was totally unprepared for how good a book this was. Let me try to explain.
At one level, this is an intellectual history of the evolution of two concepts central to international law since World War II and the Holocaust and still relevant today in the consideration of human rights abuses in conflicts all around the world. These are the ideas of "crimes against humanity" and "genocide". The author is a legal scholar who had participated in some of the recent proceeding regarding war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and in Africa. He was invited by the law faculty in Lviv in the Ukraine to give a lecture about his work, which involved these ideas. He would focus on the work of the two scholars most associated with these ideas: Hersch Lauterpacht and Rafael Lemkin. If this was all that was involved, the book would be interesting enough.
In the course of preparing for his visit, the author learns that both of these legal scholars were Jewish thinkers who grew up in the same part of the former Austrian Empire and that both studied law at the same school in Lviv that had invited Sands to speak - separated in attendance by two years. The law school was apparently unaware of this. They had even shared some professors.
....but there is more. Lviv (Lvov, Lemburg) was right in the middle of where Ukraine, Poland, Austria, and Russia came together (probably Sweden too if one goes back further) and was a focal place in the unfolding of the Final Solution by the Nazis after they conquered Poland and invaded the Soviet Union. Both Lauterpacht and Lemkin had left Lvov prior to the war, but their extended families had remained and were devastated by the Nazis. At the time when these men were developing their ideas for reforming international law to account for Nazi crimes, they were in the dark regarding the fates of their families living in Lviv and subject to Nazi rule.
....in the course of learning about this, the author also learns that his grandparents also grew up in the same Lviv and at times lived on the same street as Lauterpacht and Lemkin and that his extended family had also been devastated by the Nazis.
The book is an extended telling the story of how Lauterpacht and Lemkin independently developed their ideas and got them adopted in various forms by the various international postwar organizations such as the UN. These two stories culminate in the Nuremberg trials, especially the trial of Hans Frank, the Nazi leader of occupied Poland and the leader directly responsible for the destruction of their families. To this narrative is added that of Sands' grandparents and the daughter (his mother) as they escaped to freedom.
It is easy to get lost in the enormity of the Holocaust, especially in such recent works as Bloodlands and Black Earth - both by Timothy Snyder. This story ties together the macro story of the Holocaust and links it to the lives of specific families and areas as it developed in real time. The book is well written and the complex story can be followed. Sands is an accomplished researcher and it is amazing what he is able to find in trying to identify the lives of these wonderful people after more than seventy years.
The book is extraordinary on many levels.
At one level, this is an intellectual history of the evolution of two concepts central to international law since World War II and the Holocaust and still relevant today in the consideration of human rights abuses in conflicts all around the world. These are the ideas of "crimes against humanity" and "genocide". The author is a legal scholar who had participated in some of the recent proceeding regarding war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and in Africa. He was invited by the law faculty in Lviv in the Ukraine to give a lecture about his work, which involved these ideas. He would focus on the work of the two scholars most associated with these ideas: Hersch Lauterpacht and Rafael Lemkin. If this was all that was involved, the book would be interesting enough.
In the course of preparing for his visit, the author learns that both of these legal scholars were Jewish thinkers who grew up in the same part of the former Austrian Empire and that both studied law at the same school in Lviv that had invited Sands to speak - separated in attendance by two years. The law school was apparently unaware of this. They had even shared some professors.
....but there is more. Lviv (Lvov, Lemburg) was right in the middle of where Ukraine, Poland, Austria, and Russia came together (probably Sweden too if one goes back further) and was a focal place in the unfolding of the Final Solution by the Nazis after they conquered Poland and invaded the Soviet Union. Both Lauterpacht and Lemkin had left Lvov prior to the war, but their extended families had remained and were devastated by the Nazis. At the time when these men were developing their ideas for reforming international law to account for Nazi crimes, they were in the dark regarding the fates of their families living in Lviv and subject to Nazi rule.
....in the course of learning about this, the author also learns that his grandparents also grew up in the same Lviv and at times lived on the same street as Lauterpacht and Lemkin and that his extended family had also been devastated by the Nazis.
The book is an extended telling the story of how Lauterpacht and Lemkin independently developed their ideas and got them adopted in various forms by the various international postwar organizations such as the UN. These two stories culminate in the Nuremberg trials, especially the trial of Hans Frank, the Nazi leader of occupied Poland and the leader directly responsible for the destruction of their families. To this narrative is added that of Sands' grandparents and the daughter (his mother) as they escaped to freedom.
It is easy to get lost in the enormity of the Holocaust, especially in such recent works as Bloodlands and Black Earth - both by Timothy Snyder. This story ties together the macro story of the Holocaust and links it to the lives of specific families and areas as it developed in real time. The book is well written and the complex story can be followed. Sands is an accomplished researcher and it is amazing what he is able to find in trying to identify the lives of these wonderful people after more than seventy years.
The book is extraordinary on many levels.
April 19, 2022
What's the difference between crimes against humanity and genocide?
Philippe Sands is a lawyer and academic who works on cases involving international justice and prosecutions for war crimes and genocide so he's an entirely appropriate person to be writing this history of how the concepts of crime against humanity and genocide came into being in the wake of WW2. That Sands also has family connections both to the Holocaust and to that disputed area in central/eastern Europe where borders have shifted repeatedly and where cities such as Lviv have been, at different times, in Germany, Poland, the USSR and now Ukraine, adds a personal aspect to this book which doesn't always, for me, sit easily with the legal history.
The book is written with great knowledge, intelligence and fluency, and marshals both its facts and its historical analysis in a masterful way. However, the use of extended family histories of the key players involved: the originators of the concepts of crimes against humanity and genocide, as well as Sands' own family history and that of Hans Frank, the governor of Nazi-occupied Poland and one of the men indicted and executed at the Nuremberg trials, can slow down the legal history: all of them are treated extensively, with family and actions going back pretty much through the entire twentieth century.
So, in some ways, this is a book with a conflicted identity: it's part Holocaust history, part family memoir and investigation, part legal history, part record of the Nuremberg trials - and it all only gelled in a rather messy way.
That said, there are lots of important points being made here and it's fascinating to realise how relatively late 'crimes against humanity' and 'genocide' came into being as legal concepts, even how contested and competitive they were and how easily they might have been applied, as one of their creators intended, against Jim Crow rules, for example, and not just war-related crimes.
One of the most interesting and emotive strands involves the son of Hans Frank who was just a child of 7 when his father was on trial at Nuremberg but who has still never really forgiven his father for what he did to Poland under Nazi occupation.
So much interesting material in this book just that it's far wider and more unfocused than the title suggests. Still, an important explanation of where these legal terms and concepts came from, what they meant and might mean within systems of international justice - and how tragically relevant they continue to be for us today.
August 6, 2019
One of the most important books I have read ever!!!
A deeply moving and shocking piece of literature..
Philippe Sands an international jewish lawyer try to dig up his family secret history..
He uncovers the path which will lead him halfway across the world and even to the Nuremberg trial..
He does magnify two Nuremberg prosecutors:
Lemkin and Lauterpacht..
The two of them invented and gave birth to crimes of genocide, and crimes against humanity!!
My paperback edition has lots of pictures and documents..
Sands has done a very thorough research!!!
I've read many books about Nazi Germany and the Holocaust..
But this is a memoir/historical detective story/a powerful voice against anti-Semitism..
An outstanding and remarkable book..
Five stars isn't enough my friends..
East West Street will stay with me for a long long time indeed!!!
The best medicine against falling into oblivion and apathy/indifference..
Philippe Sands book is unputdownable and engrossing..
I also can recommend the audio book from Audible..
Very good!!!
Happy reading
Dean;)
A deeply moving and shocking piece of literature..
Philippe Sands an international jewish lawyer try to dig up his family secret history..
He uncovers the path which will lead him halfway across the world and even to the Nuremberg trial..
He does magnify two Nuremberg prosecutors:
Lemkin and Lauterpacht..
The two of them invented and gave birth to crimes of genocide, and crimes against humanity!!
My paperback edition has lots of pictures and documents..
Sands has done a very thorough research!!!
I've read many books about Nazi Germany and the Holocaust..
But this is a memoir/historical detective story/a powerful voice against anti-Semitism..
An outstanding and remarkable book..
Five stars isn't enough my friends..
East West Street will stay with me for a long long time indeed!!!
The best medicine against falling into oblivion and apathy/indifference..
Philippe Sands book is unputdownable and engrossing..
I also can recommend the audio book from Audible..
Very good!!!
Happy reading
Dean;)
May 18, 2016
Part historical inquiry, part family history, this book is a fascinating exploration of the lives of three men against the backdrop of one of the most horrifying periods in human history.
The level of research Sands has put into this book is unquestionable, using a wealth of varied evidence, including interviews, photos, letters, and court testimony. The author maintains a rather dispassionate tone through most of the book; yet his clinical statements about Nazi atrocities and the ever increasing destruction of the rights, freedoms, and lives of Jewish people (among others) in German controlled territories are used as a framework on which to build the details of his family members, as well as those of Hersch Lauterpacht and Rafael Lemkin. Sands interweaves contemporary events and personal experiences into the story of each life, showing how both factors affected the way Nazi criminal acts were conceived. Both Lauterpacht and Lemkin were fundamental agents in defining the laws and concepts that underlined the criminal trials at Nuremberg as well as the Geneva Convention. If anything, Sands' reportage style makes the stories all the more impactful; when you reduce the massive numbers down to personal experiences, 'this is my family and what happened to them', it becomes so much more relatable. Even more so when we find out that Sands' grandfather, Lemkin, and Lauterpacht all escaped death at the hands of the Nazi's, but many of their family and friends did not. Time and again, the book provides a punch in the gut, another life lost, another person never seen or heard of again. The importance and relevance of these stories may seem obvious, but only in continuing to read about them and talk about them do we feel what we intellectually know to be true.
Many thanks to Philippe Sands, Orion Publishing, and Netgalley for this copy in exchange for an honest review.
The level of research Sands has put into this book is unquestionable, using a wealth of varied evidence, including interviews, photos, letters, and court testimony. The author maintains a rather dispassionate tone through most of the book; yet his clinical statements about Nazi atrocities and the ever increasing destruction of the rights, freedoms, and lives of Jewish people (among others) in German controlled territories are used as a framework on which to build the details of his family members, as well as those of Hersch Lauterpacht and Rafael Lemkin. Sands interweaves contemporary events and personal experiences into the story of each life, showing how both factors affected the way Nazi criminal acts were conceived. Both Lauterpacht and Lemkin were fundamental agents in defining the laws and concepts that underlined the criminal trials at Nuremberg as well as the Geneva Convention. If anything, Sands' reportage style makes the stories all the more impactful; when you reduce the massive numbers down to personal experiences, 'this is my family and what happened to them', it becomes so much more relatable. Even more so when we find out that Sands' grandfather, Lemkin, and Lauterpacht all escaped death at the hands of the Nazi's, but many of their family and friends did not. Time and again, the book provides a punch in the gut, another life lost, another person never seen or heard of again. The importance and relevance of these stories may seem obvious, but only in continuing to read about them and talk about them do we feel what we intellectually know to be true.
Many thanks to Philippe Sands, Orion Publishing, and Netgalley for this copy in exchange for an honest review.
November 9, 2016
Back in 2010 the barrister Philippe Sands was asked to give a lecture at Lviv University in Ukraine on the subjects of genocide and crimes against humanity. This gave him the opportunity to visit the city, and maybe discover more about his maternal grandfather, a man who he knew so little about. Sands knew he was Jewish, had moved to Vienna as war enveloped Europe in 1914 and then moved onto Paris after the Nazis entered Austria. When he probed further he discovered that there were scant details about him; it was a life enveloped in secrecy. Little by little, he discovered details of his grandfather’s life, how the family had moved across Europe, his mother’s journey to Paris as a small child in the company of someone other than her parents, somehow staying one-step ahead as the Nazi regime started sending people to the death camps.
His visit to Lviv University also revealed that his own field of legal expertise, international humanitarian law, had been conceived by two men who had studied law there. Rafael Lemkin and Hersch Lauterpacht were the men who forged the ideas of genocide and crimes against humanity. These legal concepts were first used in anger in the Nuremburg trials post World War II when the prosecution of Nazi war criminals took place. He brings the governor-general of Nazi-occupied Poland, Hans Frank into the narrative. Responsible for the deaths of over 1 million Poles and Jews in the short time he was in charge, he also had the dubious honour of being Hitler’s personal lawyer. After the war, the lives of Franks, Lemkin and Lauterpacht would come together in the International Military Tribunals in room 600 at the Palace of Justice as the world learnt of the horrors of the Third Reich .
Sands has written a poignant and personal memoir of tracing his grandfather. However, this book is so much more than that. His story of the three people that culminated in the Nuremburg trials is a fascinating account of the development of international law. It was personal for Lemkin and Lauterpacht and his grandfather Leon too as they were among the people lost numerous members of their families in this absolute tragic and pointless loss of life that swept Europe. Words like genocide and crimes against humanity should never exist, but sadly, they do. For a book that is full of much sadness, there is hope too; the legal principles that they initiated are being used to bring people to justice. These principles that they defined will never solve the problems of the world, but they do give peoples and cultures opportunity for redress. It is a influential historical account of men who were prepared to fight brutality with peaceful means. Can highly recommend this.
His visit to Lviv University also revealed that his own field of legal expertise, international humanitarian law, had been conceived by two men who had studied law there. Rafael Lemkin and Hersch Lauterpacht were the men who forged the ideas of genocide and crimes against humanity. These legal concepts were first used in anger in the Nuremburg trials post World War II when the prosecution of Nazi war criminals took place. He brings the governor-general of Nazi-occupied Poland, Hans Frank into the narrative. Responsible for the deaths of over 1 million Poles and Jews in the short time he was in charge, he also had the dubious honour of being Hitler’s personal lawyer. After the war, the lives of Franks, Lemkin and Lauterpacht would come together in the International Military Tribunals in room 600 at the Palace of Justice as the world learnt of the horrors of the Third Reich .
Sands has written a poignant and personal memoir of tracing his grandfather. However, this book is so much more than that. His story of the three people that culminated in the Nuremburg trials is a fascinating account of the development of international law. It was personal for Lemkin and Lauterpacht and his grandfather Leon too as they were among the people lost numerous members of their families in this absolute tragic and pointless loss of life that swept Europe. Words like genocide and crimes against humanity should never exist, but sadly, they do. For a book that is full of much sadness, there is hope too; the legal principles that they initiated are being used to bring people to justice. These principles that they defined will never solve the problems of the world, but they do give peoples and cultures opportunity for redress. It is a influential historical account of men who were prepared to fight brutality with peaceful means. Can highly recommend this.
December 3, 2017
Про цю книжку хочеться говорити дуже багато, але я лише зацитую Герша Лаутерпахта: «Окрема людська істота є основною одиницею усього права»
Філіп Сендс відкриває дуже приватні людські історії, які стоять за абстрактним застосуванням абстрактних правових норм. У ситуації Нюрнбернзького трибуналу це особливо яскраво й ефектно, хоч насправді так є завжди — за мертвими нормами й умовними кейсами стоять живі люди. Наприклад, той же Лаутерпахт, котрий стояв за індивідуальні права особи, не дозволяв своїй жінці ходити з розпущеним волоссям, а маму соромив за нафарбовані нігті. Така деталь. І при цьому легітимізував концепцію «злочинів проти людяності» — одну з головних ідей міжнародного права 20 сторіччя. Сендс розказує про не найпростіший період в історії, але у манері триллера добре тримає увагу читача.
Головні герої книжки — Лаутерпахт, Лемкін та Бухгольц — зі Львова. Перші двоє вчилися в тому ж університеті, де я отримала диплом бакалавра, це головні юристи-міжнародники минулого століття. Сендс, уперше приїхавши до Львова, був вражений, що ми про них майже нічого не знаємо. Але як написали The Guardian — Львів тут, на жаль, випадковий. Якби його не було, історія би не дуже змінилася — хіба що Сендс не мав би такого інтересу в написанні книжки. Але "Видавництво Старого Лева" розуміє, що такий збіг — один на мільйон, видає Сендса, створює дискусії навколо Лемкіна і Лаутерпахта, повертає їх до Львова. І я йому за це безмежно вдячна.
Філіп Сендс відкриває дуже приватні людські історії, які стоять за абстрактним застосуванням абстрактних правових норм. У ситуації Нюрнбернзького трибуналу це особливо яскраво й ефектно, хоч насправді так є завжди — за мертвими нормами й умовними кейсами стоять живі люди. Наприклад, той же Лаутерпахт, котрий стояв за індивідуальні права особи, не дозволяв своїй жінці ходити з розпущеним волоссям, а маму соромив за нафарбовані нігті. Така деталь. І при цьому легітимізував концепцію «злочинів проти людяності» — одну з головних ідей міжнародного права 20 сторіччя. Сендс розказує про не найпростіший період в історії, але у манері триллера добре тримає увагу читача.
Головні герої книжки — Лаутерпахт, Лемкін та Бухгольц — зі Львова. Перші двоє вчилися в тому ж університеті, де я отримала диплом бакалавра, це головні юристи-міжнародники минулого століття. Сендс, уперше приїхавши до Львова, був вражений, що ми про них майже нічого не знаємо. Але як написали The Guardian — Львів тут, на жаль, випадковий. Якби його не було, історія би не дуже змінилася — хіба що Сендс не мав би такого інтересу в написанні книжки. Але "Видавництво Старого Лева" розуміє, що такий збіг — один на мільйон, видає Сендса, створює дискусії навколо Лемкіна і Лаутерпахта, повертає їх до Львова. І я йому за це безмежно вдячна.
June 6, 2023
I’m not sure how to describe this book - it’s an intriguing blend of investigation, family history, the Holocaust, and the development of international law. East West Street tells the stories of Hersch Lauterpacht and Rafael Lemkin and how they came to develop the concepts of “crimes against humanity” and “genocide”. Their stories are set alongside the wider origins of international law culminating in the Nuremberg Trials, and the life and crimes of Hans Frank, Governor General of Nazi occupied Poland. At the same time the author researches his own family history, and uncovers a secret past with similarities to Lauterpacht and Lemkin’s stories, all of which he traces back to the city of Lviv. Thoughtful, evocatively written and always interesting, I found the process of the author’s investigations just as fascinating as the stories he uncovered.
August 20, 2019
A century ago there was no such thing as international criminal law that could be applied to members of national governments. The principle of national sovereignty was paramount and governments could do whatever they wanted to their own citizens. Philippe Sands tells the unexpectedly fascinating story of how the concepts of “crimes against humanity” and “genocide” came to be developed and applied, however inconsistently, in international law.
There’s an extra dimension to the book in that the two people most involved in were both Jewish men who attended, a few years apart, what is now the University of Lviv in Ukraine (at the time it was the University of Lwòw, in Poland). Hersch Lauterpacht was largely responsible for the legal concept of “crimes against humanity”, whilst Rafael Lemkin made “genocide” into a recognised crime in international law. The author intersperses their story with that of his own, also Jewish, family as his maternal grandfather, Leon Buchholz, had also been born in Lviv (then part of Austria-Hungary and known as Lemburg). There turn out to be some remarkable geographical parallels between the author’s family and the Lauterpacht family.
Lauterpacht and Lemkin had different philosophies. Lauterpacht believed that the law existed primarily to protect individuals. His aim in creating the principle of “crimes against humanity” was to protect individuals against the abuse of state power, and to establish that there were individual rights that took precedence over national laws. He was opposed to Lemkin’s notion of “genocide” since it was based on the idea of a crime against a group of people. He believed there would be negative unintended consequences to establishing an entire ethnic group as a victim. I won’t go into these as it would make my review too long – Lauterpacht’s arguments are set out in the book.
Lemkin become interested in the idea of genocide during the Armenian massacres of 1915, noting that the Armenians had been targeted “for no other reason than they were Christians.” He was not opposed to individual rights but also felt that legal judgements should take the motive and intent of the perpetrator into account, particularly where people had been persecuted or murdered simply because of their ethnicity/religion.
Both concepts came to be applied of course in the Nuremburg Trials, the beginning of modern international law, though Lauterpacht’s ideas are still controversial. Many governments remain uncomfortable with the idea of their citizens being tried in an international criminal court. Of the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council, only the UK and France have ratified the Statute that set up the ICC.
I’ve probably made the book sound dry, but it isn’t. It’s highly readable, and the personal stories of each of the families complement the legal history. For me, the historical and legal aspects were both educational and thought-provoking. The author has done an exceptional job in making accessible this previously esoteric story.
There’s an extra dimension to the book in that the two people most involved in were both Jewish men who attended, a few years apart, what is now the University of Lviv in Ukraine (at the time it was the University of Lwòw, in Poland). Hersch Lauterpacht was largely responsible for the legal concept of “crimes against humanity”, whilst Rafael Lemkin made “genocide” into a recognised crime in international law. The author intersperses their story with that of his own, also Jewish, family as his maternal grandfather, Leon Buchholz, had also been born in Lviv (then part of Austria-Hungary and known as Lemburg). There turn out to be some remarkable geographical parallels between the author’s family and the Lauterpacht family.
Lauterpacht and Lemkin had different philosophies. Lauterpacht believed that the law existed primarily to protect individuals. His aim in creating the principle of “crimes against humanity” was to protect individuals against the abuse of state power, and to establish that there were individual rights that took precedence over national laws. He was opposed to Lemkin’s notion of “genocide” since it was based on the idea of a crime against a group of people. He believed there would be negative unintended consequences to establishing an entire ethnic group as a victim. I won’t go into these as it would make my review too long – Lauterpacht’s arguments are set out in the book.
Lemkin become interested in the idea of genocide during the Armenian massacres of 1915, noting that the Armenians had been targeted “for no other reason than they were Christians.” He was not opposed to individual rights but also felt that legal judgements should take the motive and intent of the perpetrator into account, particularly where people had been persecuted or murdered simply because of their ethnicity/religion.
Both concepts came to be applied of course in the Nuremburg Trials, the beginning of modern international law, though Lauterpacht’s ideas are still controversial. Many governments remain uncomfortable with the idea of their citizens being tried in an international criminal court. Of the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council, only the UK and France have ratified the Statute that set up the ICC.
I’ve probably made the book sound dry, but it isn’t. It’s highly readable, and the personal stories of each of the families complement the legal history. For me, the historical and legal aspects were both educational and thought-provoking. The author has done an exceptional job in making accessible this previously esoteric story.
March 14, 2020
Ha csak annyival akarnám eladni ezt a könyvet, hogy jogtörténeti munka, ami arról szól, hogyan rögzültek a „népirtás” és az „emberiesség elleni bűntett” fogalmak a nemzetközi jogban, akkor gyakorlatilag élve temetném el az idei év egyik legfontosabb tényirodalmát. Úgyhogy nem is teszek így. Mert ez a mű sokkal több ennél.
Ez ugyanis (legalábbis ami felépítését és dinamikáját illeti) egy krimi. Philippe Sands nyomozni kezd saját nagyszülei után, akik abból a Galíciából származtak el, ami a Monarchia szétesése után hol ukrán, hol lengyel, hol náci, hol pedig szovjet fennhatóság alá került, és miközben a történelem jó alaposan megnyomorgatta, lefoszlott róla minden etnikai heterogenitás. A nyomozás gócpontja a térség egykor sokszínű kulturális központja, Lemberg (vagy Lviv, vagy Lwów, esetleg Leopolis, mikor hogy), és ahogy gyűlnek az adatok, képbe kerül két egykori nemzetközi jogász is, Hersch Lauterpacht és Rafael Lemkin. Az első az „emberiesség elleni bűntett”, a második pedig a „népirtás” fogalmának kidolgozója, ilyen értelemben pedig mindketten kulcsszereplői annak az új nemzetközi jogértelmezésnek, aminek első főpróbája a nürnbergi per volt. Mindketten ugyanabból az azóta elveszett világból, a galíciai zsidó hagyományból érkeztek, ugyanarra a lembergi jogi fakultásra jártak, és mégis két gyökeresen eltérő (bár a laikusok által gyakran összemosott) jogértelmezést alakítottak ki maguknak. Lauterpacht világában a jog eredője az individuális egyén, következésképpen a tömeggyilkosság „csak” egyének elpusztítása, és ekként kezelendő, Lemkin szerint viszont a csoport ellen elkövetett atrocitások külön jogi kategóriának minősülnek, tehát a megszüntetésükre tett szisztematikus törekvéseket is külön kell vizsgálni.
Persze mit ér egy könyv főgonosz nélkül – és hát ebben az időszakban bőven lehetett kiből meríteni erre a szerepre. A nyertes Hans Frank, a megszállt lengyel területek főkormányzója, aki személyében egyik fő felelőse a keleti zsidóság elpusztításának. A dolog pikantériája, hogy Frank maga is jogász, aki egyik fő ötletgazdája volt a náci jogértelmezésnek, ami finoman szólva is meglehetősen különbözött Lauterpacht és Lemkin megközelítésétől, tekintve, hogy a nemzet közösségét állította a jog központjába, egészen konkrétan kimondva, hogy a jog az, ami Németország érdekeit szolgálja*. Három jogértelmezés csap hát össze egy pazar finálé keretein belül: a nürnbergi bíróságon.
Remekmű, mégpedig több szálon is az. Sands családfa-feltárása párosulva a kelet-európai holokauszt eseményeivel önmagában is olyan személyességgel ajándékozza meg a könyvet, hogy időnként megáll benn��nk a levegő**. És erre még ráépül a nemzetközi jog átalakulásának kérdése, ami ugye Nürnbergben egy remek tárgyalótermi dráma keretében kulminál. És ez az elem különösen aktuális kérdéseket feszeget. A második világháborút megelőzően ugyanis a nemzetközi jognak nem volt lehetősége fellépni akkor, ha egy állam a saját polgárainak elpusztítására tört. A törökök, miután kiirtották az örményeket, teljes lelki nyugalommal léphették át az országhatárokat, semmiféle retorziótól nem kellett tartaniuk. Azonban a háború pokla új helyzetet teremtett, olyan bűnöket, amelyek egyszerűen nem maradhattak megtorlatlanul, ezért lett szükség a Lauterpacht- ill. Lemkin-féle forradalmi értelmezésekre. Persze ezek az elemek új problémákat hoztak magukkal, kezdve azzal, hogy a világpolitikai realitás felülírta az újítások hatáskörét, ezért aztán szóba sem került, hogy Sztálin a vádlottak padján igazgassa a bajuszát. Azóta pedig a nemzetközi jog, a külső beavatkozás fogalma még inkább erodálódott, köszönhetően többek között II. Bush iraki ámokfutásának. Úgyhogy most a nemzeti szuverenitás fogalma reneszánszát éli, ez pedig azzal az igénnyel jár, hogy az emberi jogokat ezek a szuverén államok a sajátos szuverén módjukon értelmezhessék – magyarán ismét azt tehessenek állampolgáraikkal, amit csak akarnak, és ebbe senki ne szólhasson bele***. Ahogy a nemzetközi közösség elbátortalanodik, az autoriter állam úgy lesz egyre bátrabb. És minél kevésbé számíthat retorzióra, annál szabadabban fogja értelmezni az emberi jogokat saját állampolgáraival kapcsolatban. Ennek pedig beláthatatlan következményei lehetnek. Szóval nyilván rossz, ha nyomást gyakorolnak kívülről Szent Hazánkra, persze, nagyon rossz. De lehet, az se jobb, ha egyáltalán nem gyakorolhatnak nyomást.
* Bizonyos vélemények szerint ez a megközelítés nem áll távol Lemkin nézetétől, hiszen mindketten hajlamosak kollektív csoportokra osztani a jogalanyokat. A „népirtás” fogalmának számos kritikusa szerint ez az Achilles-sarka: amikor az áldozatukat nem egyéni, hanem csoportidentitás alapján határozza meg, óhatatlanul kiteszi magát annak a veszélynek is, hogy a bűnösökkel is így tesz majd.
** Külön kiemelném, hogy a könyvben jelentős szerepet kap Niklas Frank, Hans Frank fia, illetve a lembergi SS-körzetvezető, Otto von Wächer csemetéje, Horst is. Az, ahogy Sands a velük folytatott találkozásokat is beemeli a kötetbe, a személyességnek, az „apák és fiúk” vonulatnak egy teljesen új szintjét tárja fel.
*** Kissé off, de elég oximoron-szaga van annak, hogy a szélsőjobb a globalizációt mindig megvádolja azzal, hogy a fogyasztáson keresztül uniformizálja az embereket – ugyanakkor neki is a legfőbb célja az individuum korlátozása, csak épp a nemzetre való hivatkozással.
Ez ugyanis (legalábbis ami felépítését és dinamikáját illeti) egy krimi. Philippe Sands nyomozni kezd saját nagyszülei után, akik abból a Galíciából származtak el, ami a Monarchia szétesése után hol ukrán, hol lengyel, hol náci, hol pedig szovjet fennhatóság alá került, és miközben a történelem jó alaposan megnyomorgatta, lefoszlott róla minden etnikai heterogenitás. A nyomozás gócpontja a térség egykor sokszínű kulturális központja, Lemberg (vagy Lviv, vagy Lwów, esetleg Leopolis, mikor hogy), és ahogy gyűlnek az adatok, képbe kerül két egykori nemzetközi jogász is, Hersch Lauterpacht és Rafael Lemkin. Az első az „emberiesség elleni bűntett”, a második pedig a „népirtás” fogalmának kidolgozója, ilyen értelemben pedig mindketten kulcsszereplői annak az új nemzetközi jogértelmezésnek, aminek első főpróbája a nürnbergi per volt. Mindketten ugyanabból az azóta elveszett világból, a galíciai zsidó hagyományból érkeztek, ugyanarra a lembergi jogi fakultásra jártak, és mégis két gyökeresen eltérő (bár a laikusok által gyakran összemosott) jogértelmezést alakítottak ki maguknak. Lauterpacht világában a jog eredője az individuális egyén, következésképpen a tömeggyilkosság „csak” egyének elpusztítása, és ekként kezelendő, Lemkin szerint viszont a csoport ellen elkövetett atrocitások külön jogi kategóriának minősülnek, tehát a megszüntetésükre tett szisztematikus törekvéseket is külön kell vizsgálni.
Persze mit ér egy könyv főgonosz nélkül – és hát ebben az időszakban bőven lehetett kiből meríteni erre a szerepre. A nyertes Hans Frank, a megszállt lengyel területek főkormányzója, aki személyében egyik fő felelőse a keleti zsidóság elpusztításának. A dolog pikantériája, hogy Frank maga is jogász, aki egyik fő ötletgazdája volt a náci jogértelmezésnek, ami finoman szólva is meglehetősen különbözött Lauterpacht és Lemkin megközelítésétől, tekintve, hogy a nemzet közösségét állította a jog központjába, egészen konkrétan kimondva, hogy a jog az, ami Németország érdekeit szolgálja*. Három jogértelmezés csap hát össze egy pazar finálé keretein belül: a nürnbergi bíróságon.
Remekmű, mégpedig több szálon is az. Sands családfa-feltárása párosulva a kelet-európai holokauszt eseményeivel önmagában is olyan személyességgel ajándékozza meg a könyvet, hogy időnként megáll benn��nk a levegő**. És erre még ráépül a nemzetközi jog átalakulásának kérdése, ami ugye Nürnbergben egy remek tárgyalótermi dráma keretében kulminál. És ez az elem különösen aktuális kérdéseket feszeget. A második világháborút megelőzően ugyanis a nemzetközi jognak nem volt lehetősége fellépni akkor, ha egy állam a saját polgárainak elpusztítására tört. A törökök, miután kiirtották az örményeket, teljes lelki nyugalommal léphették át az országhatárokat, semmiféle retorziótól nem kellett tartaniuk. Azonban a háború pokla új helyzetet teremtett, olyan bűnöket, amelyek egyszerűen nem maradhattak megtorlatlanul, ezért lett szükség a Lauterpacht- ill. Lemkin-féle forradalmi értelmezésekre. Persze ezek az elemek új problémákat hoztak magukkal, kezdve azzal, hogy a világpolitikai realitás felülírta az újítások hatáskörét, ezért aztán szóba sem került, hogy Sztálin a vádlottak padján igazgassa a bajuszát. Azóta pedig a nemzetközi jog, a külső beavatkozás fogalma még inkább erodálódott, köszönhetően többek között II. Bush iraki ámokfutásának. Úgyhogy most a nemzeti szuverenitás fogalma reneszánszát éli, ez pedig azzal az igénnyel jár, hogy az emberi jogokat ezek a szuverén államok a sajátos szuverén módjukon értelmezhessék – magyarán ismét azt tehessenek állampolgáraikkal, amit csak akarnak, és ebbe senki ne szólhasson bele***. Ahogy a nemzetközi közösség elbátortalanodik, az autoriter állam úgy lesz egyre bátrabb. És minél kevésbé számíthat retorzióra, annál szabadabban fogja értelmezni az emberi jogokat saját állampolgáraival kapcsolatban. Ennek pedig beláthatatlan következményei lehetnek. Szóval nyilván rossz, ha nyomást gyakorolnak kívülről Szent Hazánkra, persze, nagyon rossz. De lehet, az se jobb, ha egyáltalán nem gyakorolhatnak nyomást.
* Bizonyos vélemények szerint ez a megközelítés nem áll távol Lemkin nézetétől, hiszen mindketten hajlamosak kollektív csoportokra osztani a jogalanyokat. A „népirtás” fogalmának számos kritikusa szerint ez az Achilles-sarka: amikor az áldozatukat nem egyéni, hanem csoportidentitás alapján határozza meg, óhatatlanul kiteszi magát annak a veszélynek is, hogy a bűnösökkel is így tesz majd.
** Külön kiemelném, hogy a könyvben jelentős szerepet kap Niklas Frank, Hans Frank fia, illetve a lembergi SS-körzetvezető, Otto von Wächer csemetéje, Horst is. Az, ahogy Sands a velük folytatott találkozásokat is beemeli a kötetbe, a személyességnek, az „apák és fiúk” vonulatnak egy teljesen új szintjét tárja fel.
*** Kissé off, de elég oximoron-szaga van annak, hogy a szélsőjobb a globalizációt mindig megvádolja azzal, hogy a fogyasztáson keresztül uniformizálja az embereket – ugyanakkor neki is a legfőbb célja az individuum korlátozása, csak épp a nemzetre való hivatkozással.
March 13, 2022
Un libro extraordinario que cuenta fundamentalmente como se gestó y desarrolló el primer Juicio de Núremberg luego de terminada la Segunda Guerra Mundial y como nacieron los delitos de lesa humanidad y genocidio.
Aunque puede parecerlo no estamos ante una novela, sino que el autor va encadenando todo el relato a partir de contarnos la biografía de cuatro individuos reales y los sucesos que se derivan de sus vidas, generalmente en relación al holocausto. Pero es para destacar la notable capacidad narrativa de Philippe Sands que le da un tono casi detectivesco al relato y consigue que el interés del lector no caiga nunca a lo largo de más de 500 páginas.
Los protagonistas del libro son el abuelo del autor, el catedrático de derecho internacional que creó el delito de “crímenes contra la humanidad”, y el abogado y fiscal judío que acuñó por primera vez el termino “genocidio”.
Los tres tenían en común el haber emigrado justo a tiempo para no caer víctimas del régimen nazi, pero ninguno de los tres pudo evitar la pérdida de buena parte de su familia en los campos de concentración; y también daba la casualidad que los tres vivían a pocas calles entre sí en la ciudad de Lviv, en la actual Ucrania. Una ciudad que es el corazón geográfico y casi un protagonista más del libro; una ciudad tristemente célebre en estos días, cuyo control cambió ocho veces de manos solo entre 1914 y 1944, llamándose Lvov, Lwów o Lemberg, dependiendo si pertenecía a los polacos, rusos o alemanes.
La cuarta historia es la de Hans Frank, abogado personal de Hitler y gobernador general de la Polonia ocupada por el nazismo, y uno de los 22 líderes nazis que terminaron en el banquillo de los acusados en Núremberg.
Un libro con un tremendo trabajo de investigación por detrás que me resultó muy emotivo, pero también muy revelador desde el punto de vista jurídico en lo que al derecho internacional de aquellos años se refiere, y me pareció por demás interesante conocer como se fue construyendo un juicio que marcó un hito en la historia por ser la primera vez que se llevaba a juicio a los lideres de un estado ante un tribunal internacional por crímenes de guerra y contra la humanidad y que sentaría las bases para lo que más tarde sería el delito de genocidio.
Excelente, muy recomendable.
Aunque puede parecerlo no estamos ante una novela, sino que el autor va encadenando todo el relato a partir de contarnos la biografía de cuatro individuos reales y los sucesos que se derivan de sus vidas, generalmente en relación al holocausto. Pero es para destacar la notable capacidad narrativa de Philippe Sands que le da un tono casi detectivesco al relato y consigue que el interés del lector no caiga nunca a lo largo de más de 500 páginas.
Los protagonistas del libro son el abuelo del autor, el catedrático de derecho internacional que creó el delito de “crímenes contra la humanidad”, y el abogado y fiscal judío que acuñó por primera vez el termino “genocidio”.
Los tres tenían en común el haber emigrado justo a tiempo para no caer víctimas del régimen nazi, pero ninguno de los tres pudo evitar la pérdida de buena parte de su familia en los campos de concentración; y también daba la casualidad que los tres vivían a pocas calles entre sí en la ciudad de Lviv, en la actual Ucrania. Una ciudad que es el corazón geográfico y casi un protagonista más del libro; una ciudad tristemente célebre en estos días, cuyo control cambió ocho veces de manos solo entre 1914 y 1944, llamándose Lvov, Lwów o Lemberg, dependiendo si pertenecía a los polacos, rusos o alemanes.
La cuarta historia es la de Hans Frank, abogado personal de Hitler y gobernador general de la Polonia ocupada por el nazismo, y uno de los 22 líderes nazis que terminaron en el banquillo de los acusados en Núremberg.
Un libro con un tremendo trabajo de investigación por detrás que me resultó muy emotivo, pero también muy revelador desde el punto de vista jurídico en lo que al derecho internacional de aquellos años se refiere, y me pareció por demás interesante conocer como se fue construyendo un juicio que marcó un hito en la historia por ser la primera vez que se llevaba a juicio a los lideres de un estado ante un tribunal internacional por crímenes de guerra y contra la humanidad y que sentaría las bases para lo que más tarde sería el delito de genocidio.
Excelente, muy recomendable.
January 12, 2019
More interesting than riveting. The official blurb goes into so much detail I don't think I could do a better job -
East West Street looks at the personal and intellectual evolution of the two men who simultaneously originated the ideas of "genocide" and "crimes against humanity," both of whom, not knowing the other, studied at the same university with the same professors, in a city little known today that was a major cultural center of Europe, "the little Paris of Ukraine," a city variously called Lemberg, Lwów, Lvov, or Lviv. It begins in 2010 and moves backward and forward in time, from the present day to twentieth-century Poland, France, Germany, England, and America, ending in the courtroom of the Palace of Justice at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg in 1945. The book opens with the author being invited to give a lecture on genocide and crimes against humanity at Lviv University, welcomed as the first international law academic to give a lecture there on such subjects in fifty years. Sands accepted the invitation with the intent of learning about the extraordinary city with its rich cultural and intellectual life, home to his maternal grandfather, a Galician Jew who had been born there a century before and who'd moved to Vienna at the outbreak of the First World War, married, had a child (the author's mother), and who then had moved to Paris after the German annexation of Austria in 1938. It was a life that had been shrouded in secrecy, with many questions not to be asked and fewer answers offered if they were. As the author uncovered, clue by clue, the deliberately obscured story of his grandfather's mysterious life and of his flight first to Vienna and then to Paris, and of his mother's journey as a child surviving Nazi occupation, Sands searched further into the history of the city of Lemberg and realized that his own field of humanitarian law had been forged by two men-Rafael Lemkin and Hersch Lauterpacht-each of whom had studied law at Lviv University in the city of his grandfather's birth, each of whom had come to be considered the finest international legal mind of the twentieth century, each considered to be the father of the modern human rights movement, and each, at parallel times, forging diametrically opposite, revolutionary concepts of humanitarian law that had changed the world. In this extraordinary and resonant book, Sands looks at who these two very private men were, and at how and why, coming from similar Jewish backgrounds and the same city, studying at the same university, each developed the theory he did, showing how each man dedicated this period of his life to having his legal concept-"genocide" and "crimes against humanity"-as a centerpiece for the prosecution of Nazi war criminals. And the author writes of a third man, Hans Frank, Hitler's personal lawyer, a Nazi from the earliest days who had destroyed so many lives, friend of Richard Strauss, collector of paintings by Leonardo da Vinci. Frank oversaw the ghetto in Lemberg in Poland in August 1942, in which the entire large Jewish population of the area had been confined on penalty of death. Frank, who was instrumental in the construction of concentration camps nearby and, weeks after becoming governor general of Nazi-occupied Poland, ordered the transfer of 133,000 men, women, and children to the death camps. Sands brilliantly writes of how all three men came together, in October 1945 in Nuremberg-Rafael Lemkin; Hersch Lauterpacht; and in the dock at the Palace of Justice, with the twenty other defendants of the Nazi high command, prisoner number 7, Hans Frank, who had overseen the extermination of more than a million Jews of Galicia and Lemberg, among them, the families of the author's grandfather as well as those of Lemkin and Lauterpacht. A book that changes the way we look at the world, at our understanding of history and how civilization has tried to cope with mass murder. Powerful; moving; tender; a revelation.
The claim that it changes the way we look at the world is obviously hyperbole but, like I said, it was interesting. 3.5 stars.
East West Street looks at the personal and intellectual evolution of the two men who simultaneously originated the ideas of "genocide" and "crimes against humanity," both of whom, not knowing the other, studied at the same university with the same professors, in a city little known today that was a major cultural center of Europe, "the little Paris of Ukraine," a city variously called Lemberg, Lwów, Lvov, or Lviv. It begins in 2010 and moves backward and forward in time, from the present day to twentieth-century Poland, France, Germany, England, and America, ending in the courtroom of the Palace of Justice at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg in 1945. The book opens with the author being invited to give a lecture on genocide and crimes against humanity at Lviv University, welcomed as the first international law academic to give a lecture there on such subjects in fifty years. Sands accepted the invitation with the intent of learning about the extraordinary city with its rich cultural and intellectual life, home to his maternal grandfather, a Galician Jew who had been born there a century before and who'd moved to Vienna at the outbreak of the First World War, married, had a child (the author's mother), and who then had moved to Paris after the German annexation of Austria in 1938. It was a life that had been shrouded in secrecy, with many questions not to be asked and fewer answers offered if they were. As the author uncovered, clue by clue, the deliberately obscured story of his grandfather's mysterious life and of his flight first to Vienna and then to Paris, and of his mother's journey as a child surviving Nazi occupation, Sands searched further into the history of the city of Lemberg and realized that his own field of humanitarian law had been forged by two men-Rafael Lemkin and Hersch Lauterpacht-each of whom had studied law at Lviv University in the city of his grandfather's birth, each of whom had come to be considered the finest international legal mind of the twentieth century, each considered to be the father of the modern human rights movement, and each, at parallel times, forging diametrically opposite, revolutionary concepts of humanitarian law that had changed the world. In this extraordinary and resonant book, Sands looks at who these two very private men were, and at how and why, coming from similar Jewish backgrounds and the same city, studying at the same university, each developed the theory he did, showing how each man dedicated this period of his life to having his legal concept-"genocide" and "crimes against humanity"-as a centerpiece for the prosecution of Nazi war criminals. And the author writes of a third man, Hans Frank, Hitler's personal lawyer, a Nazi from the earliest days who had destroyed so many lives, friend of Richard Strauss, collector of paintings by Leonardo da Vinci. Frank oversaw the ghetto in Lemberg in Poland in August 1942, in which the entire large Jewish population of the area had been confined on penalty of death. Frank, who was instrumental in the construction of concentration camps nearby and, weeks after becoming governor general of Nazi-occupied Poland, ordered the transfer of 133,000 men, women, and children to the death camps. Sands brilliantly writes of how all three men came together, in October 1945 in Nuremberg-Rafael Lemkin; Hersch Lauterpacht; and in the dock at the Palace of Justice, with the twenty other defendants of the Nazi high command, prisoner number 7, Hans Frank, who had overseen the extermination of more than a million Jews of Galicia and Lemberg, among them, the families of the author's grandfather as well as those of Lemkin and Lauterpacht. A book that changes the way we look at the world, at our understanding of history and how civilization has tried to cope with mass murder. Powerful; moving; tender; a revelation.
The claim that it changes the way we look at the world is obviously hyperbole but, like I said, it was interesting. 3.5 stars.
August 27, 2024
Impressive, astounding, momentous…
The last part in which Sands speaks with Nicholas Frank, the son of Nazi criminal Hans Frank, being absolutely the peak of the book.
I am tempted to give it 5 stars because of my sympathy for the project, but that wouldn’t correspond with my reading experience. In places it was a bit longwinded, I thought there was a little too much talk of family members without no hint of where the author was going. Also it was a bit difficult to keep track of all the names and how they were relater or played a role in the narrative. There’s actually a PDF included, which I haven’t looked at, I assumme it gives some hints. But then the narrative started on the Nuremburg processes and I was hooked again. The whole meeting with Nicholas Frank whose father was hanged because of his participation in the Nazi atrocities was captivating and I’m impressed with Nicholas Frank to come forward and denounce his own father. In stark contrast to his elder brother which makes it all the more stunning..
More to come, as I digest what I have been listening to……
The last part in which Sands speaks with Nicholas Frank, the son of Nazi criminal Hans Frank, being absolutely the peak of the book.
I am tempted to give it 5 stars because of my sympathy for the project, but that wouldn’t correspond with my reading experience. In places it was a bit longwinded, I thought there was a little too much talk of family members without no hint of where the author was going. Also it was a bit difficult to keep track of all the names and how they were relater or played a role in the narrative. There’s actually a PDF included, which I haven’t looked at, I assumme it gives some hints. But then the narrative started on the Nuremburg processes and I was hooked again. The whole meeting with Nicholas Frank whose father was hanged because of his participation in the Nazi atrocities was captivating and I’m impressed with Nicholas Frank to come forward and denounce his own father. In stark contrast to his elder brother which makes it all the more stunning..
More to come, as I digest what I have been listening to……
February 26, 2022
Qué libro más impresionante, todo un monumento. La historia de los dos juristas creadores del concepto de Genocidio y de Crímenes contra la Humanidad, entrelazada con la del abuelo del autor.
¿Sabían que Lemkin, Lauterpacht y el abuelo Buchholz nacieron y vivieron al mismo tiempo en Lviv? ¿que esa ciudad cambió de manos 8 veces entre 1914 y 1945, entre austríacos, polacos, alemanes, soviéticos y ucranianos? ¿que el terrible gobernador nazi Hans Frank controló el área por años, contribuyendo al exterminio del 90% de sus judíos?
Pocos lugares sufrieron más en la Segunda Guerra Mundial que esta ciudad. Sin embargo, de ella salieron las dos mentes que hicieron posible juzgar a los principales jerarcas nazis en Nuremberg. El autor, profesor de Derecho Internacional, convierte una lección de Historia en un increíble libro que humaniza introduciendo a su abuelo -superviviente judío- a modo de homenaje.
Muchas veces creemos que hemos escuchado todo sobre esa época, y entonces encontramos una obra como ésta. En 1945, tras la Guerra, no estaba claro cómo juzgar a los responsables nazis. Hasta que estos juristas aparecieron. A ellos les debemos mucho. Ésta es su historia.
¿Sabían que Lemkin, Lauterpacht y el abuelo Buchholz nacieron y vivieron al mismo tiempo en Lviv? ¿que esa ciudad cambió de manos 8 veces entre 1914 y 1945, entre austríacos, polacos, alemanes, soviéticos y ucranianos? ¿que el terrible gobernador nazi Hans Frank controló el área por años, contribuyendo al exterminio del 90% de sus judíos?
Pocos lugares sufrieron más en la Segunda Guerra Mundial que esta ciudad. Sin embargo, de ella salieron las dos mentes que hicieron posible juzgar a los principales jerarcas nazis en Nuremberg. El autor, profesor de Derecho Internacional, convierte una lección de Historia en un increíble libro que humaniza introduciendo a su abuelo -superviviente judío- a modo de homenaje.
Muchas veces creemos que hemos escuchado todo sobre esa época, y entonces encontramos una obra como ésta. En 1945, tras la Guerra, no estaba claro cómo juzgar a los responsables nazis. Hasta que estos juristas aparecieron. A ellos les debemos mucho. Ésta es su historia.
May 31, 2016
East West Street – A Profoundly Personal Story
On the 13th April 1940 in Skałat, my Great Grandmother was arrested by officers of the NKVD for the given reason her husband was a Police Officer in the border town of Podwołoczyska to the right of the river Zbruch and her son was in the Polish Army fighting for the enemy (Poland). She was transported to Siberia, in cattle trucks, that the following year would be utilised by the Nazi regime of Hans Frank in Galicia.
Skałat is 92 miles to the east of Lwów or as it was called from 1792, Lemberg, both are in what is referred to as the Kresy, the eastern borderlands of Poland were reborn in 1918 after 100 years of being partitioned by the occupying forces of Austria, Russia and Prussia. In the pre-war census of Lwów it was a City whose population was one third Polish, one third Jewish, 15 per cent Ukrainian with a mixture of German, Russians, Swedes, Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians making up the rest of the population.
The Lemberg that Philippe Sands introduces us to as the back drop to this personal story really was a multicultural City of learning, arts and cultures. But behind this though was a background of suspicion towards other cultures, and religiously different. Jewish pogroms were not unknown to many either side of the river Zbruch something even today people would rather forget or not talk about.
Like Philippe Sands and many others from the Kresy, those that lived through those times rarely if ever actually spoke about the period. My Grandfather was exactly the same as Leon, Sands Grandfather, but with less pictures, and not allowed to visit Poland until 1970. Fortunately, now those stories are being recorded and published as these stories must not die. One cannot allow either the Holocaust or the deportation of the Polish and Jewish Intelligentsia by both sides be forgotten.
In this very personal story we find that that Sands has been invited to give a lecture in Lwów or as it is now L’viv University, on international law. So he begins an investigation not only in to his own family’s link with the city but also the City’s links with the origins of genocide and crimes against humanity as part of international law. That these not only are inextricably linked with the Nuremberg Trials but also linked to the City, by two men born, educated in the borderlands, both Jewish both lawyers, both fortunate to escape the Nazi invasion.
What Sands uncovers is an absolutely fascinating story which he is able to tell without any personal animosity, but the great love and the lawyer’s precision brings all this to life. What he does do is weave together part family history, part historical detective and throw in to the mix the legal backdrop to the story. From introducing his search of what happened to his Grandfather Leon, we also follow the stories of Hersch Lauterpacht and Rafael Lemkin, both Polish Jews, both academics, both studied in Lemberg and then like Leon paths diverged.
While both Lauterpacht and Lemkin’s links to the Nuremberg Trails are either hidden or very much forgotten, it was due to these two jurists that we now have a human rights law and more importantly an International Criminal Court, even if it took well over fifty years to come in to existence. Without either we today would not have either ‘Crimes against humanity’ or ‘Genocide’ in the modern lexicon and more importantly in the legal lexicon.
While our three main characters did not know each other, their families were deeply affected by the actions and decisions of Hans Frank the Governor-General of Nazi occupied Poland. Whose story is told via his son Niklas which was interesting and especially his feelings towards his father.
The breadth and in a way the brevity of this very personal investigation makes for stunning and absolutely riveting read. Like any successful lawyer there are no wasted words or meaningless detours but the facts of the story laid bare which makes East West Street so engrossing.
Like many from the Kresy is I need to learn something that Sands has been able to do in this story, in the ability to forgive and move on something that is not easy, when members of your family are murdered because they are Jewish. But Sands does state that ‘forgetting is not an option’ which is so true and so important.
East West Street has transcended so many genres, and like his legal forebears he breaks convention and has created an engrossing read. He has managed to weave the highly personal stories of three people and the global impact of their times and what they achieved in to a success, and this in the face of evil, intent on killing them.
From first to last page the reader will be drawn in to a powerful story. East West Street is not a book I shall forget and shall never fail to recommend.
On the 13th April 1940 in Skałat, my Great Grandmother was arrested by officers of the NKVD for the given reason her husband was a Police Officer in the border town of Podwołoczyska to the right of the river Zbruch and her son was in the Polish Army fighting for the enemy (Poland). She was transported to Siberia, in cattle trucks, that the following year would be utilised by the Nazi regime of Hans Frank in Galicia.
Skałat is 92 miles to the east of Lwów or as it was called from 1792, Lemberg, both are in what is referred to as the Kresy, the eastern borderlands of Poland were reborn in 1918 after 100 years of being partitioned by the occupying forces of Austria, Russia and Prussia. In the pre-war census of Lwów it was a City whose population was one third Polish, one third Jewish, 15 per cent Ukrainian with a mixture of German, Russians, Swedes, Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians making up the rest of the population.
The Lemberg that Philippe Sands introduces us to as the back drop to this personal story really was a multicultural City of learning, arts and cultures. But behind this though was a background of suspicion towards other cultures, and religiously different. Jewish pogroms were not unknown to many either side of the river Zbruch something even today people would rather forget or not talk about.
Like Philippe Sands and many others from the Kresy, those that lived through those times rarely if ever actually spoke about the period. My Grandfather was exactly the same as Leon, Sands Grandfather, but with less pictures, and not allowed to visit Poland until 1970. Fortunately, now those stories are being recorded and published as these stories must not die. One cannot allow either the Holocaust or the deportation of the Polish and Jewish Intelligentsia by both sides be forgotten.
In this very personal story we find that that Sands has been invited to give a lecture in Lwów or as it is now L’viv University, on international law. So he begins an investigation not only in to his own family’s link with the city but also the City’s links with the origins of genocide and crimes against humanity as part of international law. That these not only are inextricably linked with the Nuremberg Trials but also linked to the City, by two men born, educated in the borderlands, both Jewish both lawyers, both fortunate to escape the Nazi invasion.
What Sands uncovers is an absolutely fascinating story which he is able to tell without any personal animosity, but the great love and the lawyer’s precision brings all this to life. What he does do is weave together part family history, part historical detective and throw in to the mix the legal backdrop to the story. From introducing his search of what happened to his Grandfather Leon, we also follow the stories of Hersch Lauterpacht and Rafael Lemkin, both Polish Jews, both academics, both studied in Lemberg and then like Leon paths diverged.
While both Lauterpacht and Lemkin’s links to the Nuremberg Trails are either hidden or very much forgotten, it was due to these two jurists that we now have a human rights law and more importantly an International Criminal Court, even if it took well over fifty years to come in to existence. Without either we today would not have either ‘Crimes against humanity’ or ‘Genocide’ in the modern lexicon and more importantly in the legal lexicon.
While our three main characters did not know each other, their families were deeply affected by the actions and decisions of Hans Frank the Governor-General of Nazi occupied Poland. Whose story is told via his son Niklas which was interesting and especially his feelings towards his father.
The breadth and in a way the brevity of this very personal investigation makes for stunning and absolutely riveting read. Like any successful lawyer there are no wasted words or meaningless detours but the facts of the story laid bare which makes East West Street so engrossing.
Like many from the Kresy is I need to learn something that Sands has been able to do in this story, in the ability to forgive and move on something that is not easy, when members of your family are murdered because they are Jewish. But Sands does state that ‘forgetting is not an option’ which is so true and so important.
East West Street has transcended so many genres, and like his legal forebears he breaks convention and has created an engrossing read. He has managed to weave the highly personal stories of three people and the global impact of their times and what they achieved in to a success, and this in the face of evil, intent on killing them.
From first to last page the reader will be drawn in to a powerful story. East West Street is not a book I shall forget and shall never fail to recommend.
October 14, 2021
Це дуже потужна книга, яка з початку здається лише документальною історією однієї родини, але поступово переростає у щось більш глобальне. Книга містить багато фактів довоєнного та повоєнного часу та охоплює Жовкви, Львів, Вену, Паріж, Нюрнберг та інши міста. З її сторінок ви дізнаєтеся про двох юристів, які навчалися у Львівському університеті та внесли значний вклад у міжнародне право
October 27, 2017
Absolutely brilliant. Written like a thriller, this is the true account of the birth of the notions of genocide and crimes against humanity and their entry into the legal realm. This book is beautiful enough as a story of human beings, but it is invaluable as a history of international law. Sands writes in a captivating tone, changing between fast-paced and mellow prose according to the subject he is dealing with, often on the same page. The telling on the Nuremberg Trials is, again, outstanding. The attention to detail and research that has gone into writing this amazes me. I have no bad words to say about this work and no complaints to make. For anyone interested in the concept of genocide, this is, if not the first book you should get your hands on, then at most the fifth. And I'm not even sure if any other book I've read on the subject matches this one in personality alone... Mesmerizing. It truly gave me a joy ride to read it, and I know I will return to it time and time again for future reference.
February 15, 2018
This is a deeply personal account of the Nuremberg trial. All the main character ties to the author's own life and more so, to that of his grandfather Leon. Most of Leon's family were lost to German racial politics. One of the defendants in the trial was Hans Frank, the governor general of Leon's hometown Lemberg.
Before the Nuremberg trials, no leaders of any country had had to face an international court before, to answer for their actions. No one in Turkey was ever charged with killing 1,5 millions Armenians. What a country did within its own border was its own business. This changed after World War II. The Nazi leaders were charged with crimes against humanity and genocide, entirely new concepts.
This is a heartfelt and personal account of the Nazi crimes. It's a fascinating and informative historical account. There were a lot of lonely Jewish survivors. The author's grand father Leon was one of them. Never wanting to talk about all that he had lost.
Before the Nuremberg trials, no leaders of any country had had to face an international court before, to answer for their actions. No one in Turkey was ever charged with killing 1,5 millions Armenians. What a country did within its own border was its own business. This changed after World War II. The Nazi leaders were charged with crimes against humanity and genocide, entirely new concepts.
This is a heartfelt and personal account of the Nazi crimes. It's a fascinating and informative historical account. There were a lot of lonely Jewish survivors. The author's grand father Leon was one of them. Never wanting to talk about all that he had lost.
April 10, 2021
El título completo es Calle Este-Oeste , Sobre los orígenes de "genocidio" y "crímenes contra la humanidad" lo que ya nos da una pista sobre lo que vamos a encontrar. Más o menos.
En 2010 Philippe Sands recibe una invitación de la Universidad de Lviv para dar una conferencia y algo le hace clic. Lviv, Leópolis, Lwow o Lemberg es una ciudad de la actual Ucrania que ha pasado por muchas manos a lo largo de su historia y es también donde nacieron tres personas muy importante para Sands a nivel personal y profesional: su abuelo materno Leon, que huyó a París en los años 30, Lauterpatch, abogado que creó el concepto "crímenes contra la humanidad" y que tuvo un papel muy importante como apoyo a la delegación inglesa en el Juicio de Núremberg y por último, Rafael Lemkin, que acuñó el término "genocidio" y que como Lauterpatch también estuvo en la sala 600 de Núremberg, él con la delegación estadounidense.
Los tres eran judíos y los tres huyeron a tiempo de su tierra para, al final, ser casi los únicos supervivientes de sus respectivas familias. Y de eso también habla este ensayo sobre crímenes contra la humanidad, genocidio y Núremberg, de la familia. De lo que se oculta durante años porque es tan doloroso que no se puede expresar. De quedarte sin familia por una mera cuestión geográfica, política, racial o religiosa, porque el Estado antes de los años treinta podía hacer con sus ciudadanos lo que le pareciera. De familias que te avergüenzan también, claro, como le pasa a Niklas Frank, hijo de Hans Frank, gobernador general de Polonia al que también se conocía como "el abogado de Hitler". Frank fue condenado a la horca tras el juicio de Núremberg por todas las tropelías que cometió durante su mandato en Polonia, que entonces tenía la ciudad de Lviv en su territorio. Niklas ayudará a Sands en su investigación para poder entender Núremberg en todo su conjunto. La familia, ese gran tema.
Philippe Sands es un abogado británico de derecho internacional que ha participado en los juicios de genocidio en Ruanda, la detención de Pinochet, la invasión de Irak o Guantánamo.
Que no os echen para atrás sus 600 páginas o que hable de derecho y juicios, el libro es súper ameno y merece muchísimo la pena.
En 2010 Philippe Sands recibe una invitación de la Universidad de Lviv para dar una conferencia y algo le hace clic. Lviv, Leópolis, Lwow o Lemberg es una ciudad de la actual Ucrania que ha pasado por muchas manos a lo largo de su historia y es también donde nacieron tres personas muy importante para Sands a nivel personal y profesional: su abuelo materno Leon, que huyó a París en los años 30, Lauterpatch, abogado que creó el concepto "crímenes contra la humanidad" y que tuvo un papel muy importante como apoyo a la delegación inglesa en el Juicio de Núremberg y por último, Rafael Lemkin, que acuñó el término "genocidio" y que como Lauterpatch también estuvo en la sala 600 de Núremberg, él con la delegación estadounidense.
Los tres eran judíos y los tres huyeron a tiempo de su tierra para, al final, ser casi los únicos supervivientes de sus respectivas familias. Y de eso también habla este ensayo sobre crímenes contra la humanidad, genocidio y Núremberg, de la familia. De lo que se oculta durante años porque es tan doloroso que no se puede expresar. De quedarte sin familia por una mera cuestión geográfica, política, racial o religiosa, porque el Estado antes de los años treinta podía hacer con sus ciudadanos lo que le pareciera. De familias que te avergüenzan también, claro, como le pasa a Niklas Frank, hijo de Hans Frank, gobernador general de Polonia al que también se conocía como "el abogado de Hitler". Frank fue condenado a la horca tras el juicio de Núremberg por todas las tropelías que cometió durante su mandato en Polonia, que entonces tenía la ciudad de Lviv en su territorio. Niklas ayudará a Sands en su investigación para poder entender Núremberg en todo su conjunto. La familia, ese gran tema.
Philippe Sands es un abogado británico de derecho internacional que ha participado en los juicios de genocidio en Ruanda, la detención de Pinochet, la invasión de Irak o Guantánamo.
Que no os echen para atrás sus 600 páginas o que hable de derecho y juicios, el libro es súper ameno y merece muchísimo la pena.
August 7, 2016
Phillippe Sands, a professor of law at University College London, has written a meticulously researched study on the origins of the legal concepts of genocide and crimes against humanity. The book opens by drawing a clear distinction between the terms, noting how despite their seeming complementarity that they draw on two distinct understandings of rights. "Crimes against humanity" originates in the idea of the rights of the individual, while "genocide" is rooted in the notion of the rights of the group. The bulk of the book focuses on the parallel lives of the two Jewish thinkers who developed and promoted these legal concepts -- Hersch Lauterpacht (crimes against humanity) and Raphael Lemkin (genocide). Sands becomes something of an archeologist as he digs into their shared past in Galicia and the crimes committed by the Nazis that destroyed their families and informed their approach to the law. But while this books provides in depth information on occupied Poland under the Nazis, it is not a history of Nazism or the Holocaust, but rather a history of the emergence of a new approach to international law and to human rights.
December 3, 2017
Très très instructif pour ma part, je ne l'oublierai pas de si tôt. Il devient une de mes références.
June 21, 2016
Part family history, part legal history.
Dominic Sands is a human rights and his family history links him with the holocaust and two key characters behind the war crimes trial at Nuremberg and the legal precedents set subsequently.
Sands’ exploration of his family history is the most compelling part of the book, particularly his meetings with the sons of former Nazis. The legal history sections whilst important do drag sometimes.
Overall a fascinating journey into the past with much relevance for today.
Dominic Sands is a human rights and his family history links him with the holocaust and two key characters behind the war crimes trial at Nuremberg and the legal precedents set subsequently.
Sands’ exploration of his family history is the most compelling part of the book, particularly his meetings with the sons of former Nazis. The legal history sections whilst important do drag sometimes.
Overall a fascinating journey into the past with much relevance for today.
September 15, 2019
Please do read Mikey b’s review on this book. I rely on him to guide me to stellar history books. This was excellent. Heartbreaking and in some ways hopeful. Sands runs parallel stories here. He seeks a historical understanding of the origins of genocide and crimes against humanity while also researching his family of origin. It’s a rare event for a non fiction book to bring me to tears but I found the conclusion of this book to be incredibly moving. Highly recommended.
October 29, 2017
Неймовірне дослідження сім'ї (і зародків міжнародного права), яке читається, як захопливий роман. А ще як сімейна сага, а ще як детектив. А ще це чудовий манюал, як робити дослідження власного роду. А ще... Ви зрозуміли, в цій книжці є дуже багато чого.
І крім головних героїв: дідуся Філіпа Сендса Леона, автора поняття злочини проти людства - Герша Лаутерпахта, автора поняття геноцид Рафала Лемкіна та їхнього прямого супротивника і ворога, міністра юстиції нацистської Німеччини та генерал-губернатора Галичини Ганса Франка, ще є герой-місто. Львів, Львув, Львов та Лемберг.
Автор поступово розповідає історію життя усіх героїв, а потім усе це підсумовує подією, яка усіх об'єднала - Нюрнберзьким процесом.
Найбільше мене зачарувала в цій книжці межовість форми. Де повністю невигадану, реальну історію подано, як худо��ній твір. Такий історичний нонфікшн хочетьс�� ставити до прикладу.
Звісно, сумно читати ті частини, що про нацистський Львів. Дуже похмура сторінка історії.
Раджу усім, хто цікавиться темами Шоа, Міжнародного права і того, як воно з'явилося. Адже люди, які зробили надзвичайно багато для нього походять із Львова та Жовкви. Також усім, хто любить читати сімейні історії, та пошуки рідних крізь таке важке 20 століття. Та тим, хто хоче ближче роздивитися тих, став власне тим самим злом. Їхні обличчя, і навіть історії рідних. А також тим, хто просто любить якісний нон-фікшн.
І крім головних героїв: дідуся Філіпа Сендса Леона, автора поняття злочини проти людства - Герша Лаутерпахта, автора поняття геноцид Рафала Лемкіна та їхнього прямого супротивника і ворога, міністра юстиції нацистської Німеччини та генерал-губернатора Галичини Ганса Франка, ще є герой-місто. Львів, Львув, Львов та Лемберг.
Автор поступово розповідає історію життя усіх героїв, а потім усе це підсумовує подією, яка усіх об'єднала - Нюрнберзьким процесом.
Найбільше мене зачарувала в цій книжці межовість форми. Де повністю невигадану, реальну історію подано, як худо��ній твір. Такий історичний нонфікшн хочетьс�� ставити до прикладу.
Звісно, сумно читати ті частини, що про нацистський Львів. Дуже похмура сторінка історії.
Раджу усім, хто цікавиться темами Шоа, Міжнародного права і того, як воно з'явилося. Адже люди, які зробили надзвичайно багато для нього походять із Львова та Жовкви. Також усім, хто любить читати сімейні історії, та пошуки рідних крізь таке важке 20 століття. Та тим, хто хоче ближче роздивитися тих, став власне тим самим злом. Їхні обличчя, і навіть історії рідних. А також тим, хто просто любить якісний нон-фікшн.
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