Review: East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity

By Phillipe Sands

My rating: 5 of 5 star

Philippe Sands, QC is a Franco-British Lawyer at Matrix Chambers, and Professor of Laws and Director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals at University College London.

Synopsis:

When human rights lawyer Philippe Sands received an invitation to deliver a lecture in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, he began to uncover a series of extraordinary historical coincidences. It set him on a quest that would take him halfway around the world in an exploration of the origins of international law and the pursuit of his own secret family history, beginning and ending with the last day of the Nuremberg trial.

Part historical detective story, part family history, part legal thriller, Philippe Sands guides us between past and present as several interconnected stories unfold in parallel. The first is the hidden story of two Nuremberg prosecutors who discover, only at the end of the trial, that the man they are prosecuting may be responsible for the murder of their entire families in Nazi-occupied Poland, in and around Lviv. The two prosecutors, Hersch Lauterpacht and Rafael Lemkin, were remarkable men, whose efforts led to the inclusion of the terms 'crimes against humanity' and 'genocide' in the judgement at Nuremberg. The defendant, Hans Frank, Hitler's personal lawyer and Governor-General of Nazi-occupied Poland, turns out to be an equally compelling character.

The lives of these three men lead Sands to a more personal story, as he traces the events that overwhelmed his mother's family in Lviv and Vienna during the Second World War. At the heart of this book is an equally personal quest to understand the roots of international law and the concepts that have dominated Sands' work as a lawyer. Eventually, he finds unexpected answers to his questions about his family, in this powerful meditation on the way memory, crime and guilt leave scars across generations, and the haunting gaps left by the secrets of others.

Review:

This book is immaculately researched and articulated by the author. I can see why it was awarded the Winner of Baille Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, the Winner of JQ-Wingate Literary Prize for Non-Fiction and was shortlisted for Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Award and Duff Cooper Prize.

I listened to this book via Audible however, this review is purely my own. The narration was atmospheric and interesting with both the author and David Rintoul giving interesting insight into the characters we meet through the course of the book, to the point you almost feel your going on this journey of discovery together.

An invitation received to visit and lecture at the University in Lviv (western Ukrain) takes the author and his readers on a journey, upon going there he finds both familial connections expanding alongside his research on both a personal and a historical level connecting his personal story and memories with WWII and the conclusion reached with the Nuremberg Trials.

One of the main people we are introduced to is Hersch Lauterpacht, who later brings to law the term "Crimes Against Humanity" which is a deliberate act that causes human suffering or death on a large scale.

There are intertwining ties both with the town of Lviv and also Rafael Lemkin who both studied at the university and became intrinsically connected through the events of World War II. It is Rafael Lemkin who introduces the legal term of "Genocide" which is the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those in a particular nation or ethnic group.

Both terms are clearly identified and discussed during the content of this book.

I was both angered and frustrated, feeling the pain Rafael Lemkin must have felt abut the persecution and actions again the Jews by the Nazi regime prior to World War II in 1939 and how these were ignored by the laws written during the Nuremberg trials.

I found myself emotionally bereft when at the end of the book we find out the fate of both men's family (including the authors).

This book identifies two points of view specific to the atrocities carried out under the Nazi regime from their inception to their reference and implementation during the Nuremburg trials and ultimately by the end of the book you see the two legal perspectives of these eminent minds about the Nazi's mass murders and how it has slowly but continued to be reviewed, revisited and implemented in countries across the world to the current day involving instances of Armenia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur.

Notable cases of Crimes against Humanity have taken place in France and Canada but are of high standing so subject to universal jurisdiction.

For this reason I believe this book is a compelling and important read showing a new insight into the legal ramifications of human mass murder.