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

Phillipe Sands is a lawyer and scholar. He works in the field of international law with respect to crimes against humanity and genocide. A large part of his family was murdered in the holocaust. In this book he looks at the genesis of the crimes against humanity and genocide.He uses the lens of his uncle Leon who escaped to the UK, Hersch Lauterpacht, Raphael Lemkin and Hans Frank.Lauterpacht and Lemkin were the legal scholars who introduced and defined the terms crimes against humanity and genocide. Hans Frank was the Governor of Galicia, politician and Hitler's lawyer. These characters come together in Lemberg/Lwow. Their stories culminate in this book with the war crimes tribunal in Nuremberg in 1946.The book is broken down into 10 sections. Each section is subdivided into smaller chapters. Each smaller chapter is very short. This structure helps the book flow although it can seem a little confusing at first sight. The book is well paced as it jumps from story to story. Sands' understanding of his grandfather's world slowly evolves and ties into the stories of Lauterpacht, Lemkin and Frank. The book could have been filled with anger. It isn't, the style chosen draws you into the story and helps the reader understand the course of history.This is highly recommended for its humanity and depth both of which are enhanced through Sands' style and expertise.

In East West Street, the reader actually gets treated to three stories. One is the family story of Phillipe Sands who has relatives who survived the Holocaust, thus explaining why he wrote this book and the two men who developed the terms “genocide” and “crimes against humanity” East West Street is like reading a detective story of sorts because one is not exactly sure how the pieces of the three men fit together at points, but by the end they do fit. Having the patience to wait it out may be the hard part.The choppy vignette nature of some of the sections could make it difficult for certain readers to get truly invested in the story because the minute one gets engaged with one story, the story switches to another character and the process repeats itself. I had trouble with this aspect, but that is really up to the individual reader. To the positive, he made this book quite readable and intimate, which is far from a given with lawyer types. To Genocide scholars, I think he humanized Raphael Lemkin and others and left a better understanding of the humanness behind the convention that means so much.

“East West Street” presents the historical intersection of four lives in the thirties and forties arising from the Nazi occupation of Poland, specifically Lemberg (L’viv, L’vow), and its savagery against its Jews which gave rise to the legal concept of "crimes against humanity" at the Nuremberg prosecutions in 1945-6, and, ultimately the modern legally cognizable crime of "genocide." Author Phillipe Sands' research is impeccable, the impact of this slice of the Holocaust heart wrenchingly personal as he relates its impact on his Paris based grandparents and his mother as an infant. Impressive is Sands' thoughtful illumination of the magnitude of the revolutionary protection of the "individual" over the interests of the "state, " in describing the writings of one of his principal subjects, Professor Hersch Lauterpacht of Cambridge.Notably, Sands' writing is never overwrought, excessive or unduly adjectival in expression, rather he lets the facts control, deftly shifting focus in his 150+ chapters interspersed with abundant photos and maps. Even his treatment of the repulsive Hans Frank is even handed and justified, ending with a photo of his corpus post hanging in October 1946. This is a thoughtful, granular history of Nazi cruelty in Poland and its final damning judgement in Nuremberg.

Incredibly researched, well written and will tear your heart out if your grandparents are from the general area. Mine were, immigrated in the late 1890's: If not, there is a very good chance my parents nor I would have been alive to read the book. I have given 5 copies of this book to close Jewish and non-Jewish friends.

A great book on the laws governing genocide and crimes against humanity (two separate legal theories). It traces the origins of these theories back to WWII, and the Holocaust. It’s such a well written book that it is never dry as the author incorporated personal stories about two of the most important minds in International Law. The author also includes personal anecdotes as to why these legal theories came to bear upon the Nuremberg trials after WWII. A fascinating read and I highly recommend this book for legal scholars, historians and anyone interested in how these theories have evolved since the Nuremberg trials. Beautifully written and well researched.

Sands’s book is so well constructed and gives an excellent view into WWII and its effect on Ukraine, though it shows a broad international scope and settings. The origins of the “crimes against humanity“ and “genocide“ phrases are so interesting, and the background from Sands’s research is amazing. The book is unlike anything I have read, a great and highly praised nonfiction narrative. Readers interested in history, the Nuremberg trials, or human rights will find this book indispensable.

In this page-turning work of non-fiction Philippe Sands combines a personal memoir with a legal and political history. His detective work in unearthing the history of members of his family in Poland at the time of Hitler's rise and the Holocaust that took many of their lives is as enthralling as the best of crime fiction but the crime he is investigating is the crime of a nation against a people. Parallel with his personal story is that of two lawyers who, in one of the many coincidences that characterise the book, came from the same part of the world as his family and who, each in his own way, contributed to the vocabulary of international law. It is an absolutely fascinating work.

Philippe Sands, the distinguished human rights lawyer, has written a wonderful book about his Jewish grandparents’ experiences in World War Two and he cleverly sets these experiences within a very broad legal and historic context. All roads in the story lead to Lviv, a city that changed hands no fewer than eight times between 1914 and 1944 and was in German-occupied Poland at this time. Dr Hans Frank, the brutal yet cultured Nazi Governor-General of Poland in these years, assumed responsibility for the extermination of the Jewish population in Lviv. The book culminates in his trial, together with two dozen other leading Nazis, at Nuremberg in November 1946-47. In a gripping account of the trial (supported by some remarkable photographs), Sands notes that it was “the first time in human history that the leaders of a state were put on trial before an international court for crimes against humanity and genocide, two new crimes.”There is much fascinating legal detail in the book, and the hero is the great Cambridge Law Professor, Hersch Lauterpacht, the father of modern human rights whose own family perished in Poland. It is one of a number of strange coincidences in the book that Lauterpacht was himself a law student in Lviv (though unable to take his final examinations because the University had ejected Jews.) Lauterpacht put the term ‘crimes against humanity’ – "three words" which, as Sands puts it, "describe the murder of four million Jews and Poles on the territory of Poland” - into the Nuremburg trial. This revolutionary new concept has placed limits on state sovereignty ever since and has meant that states are no longer free to treat their people as they wish.In carrying out his research, Sands undertook a huge amount of painstaking detective work in an effort to track down people who had connections with the main characters who feature in the book – people who knew about his grandparents and other family members, the lawyers who appear in the story, Hans Frank, etc. Many of these people seem to have enjoyed extraordinary longevity, and Sands includes some of their astonishing accounts (together with photographs) in his book. In one chapter, he writes about the ‘fearless’ Miss Elsie Tilney of Norwich who smuggled Sands’s own mother, just a year old, out of German-occupied Vienna in 1939. Without the heroism of Miss Tilney, this book would not have been written.The many poignant stories that Sands tells of his Jewish relatives, almost all of whom died in Lviv, are at times almost unbearable to read. Yet they provide a unique picture of the tragedy of life as experienced by Jews in the city in those years. The book, though scholarly and erudite in tone, is beautifully written and immensely readable It is a truly remarkable book.

I bought this book because it appeared on The Economist's list of books of the year.Sands takes us on a journey through history, following the lives of several people, all connected to the (now Ukranian) town of Lviv. The town has gone by many names, and changed hands eight times between 1914 and 1944. Two of the people we follow are prominent legal scholars, each of whom was instrumental in the Nuremberg Nazi trials in 1946.These trials were the birth of international law as we know it today, and the first time in recorded history where the leaders of a nation were held accountable for for crimes committed against their own people. Up until this point, states were allowed to treat their own people however they wished. This changed at Nuremberg, where individual rights took precedence over national laws. Crimes against humanity and genocide, words which we hear on a semi-regular basis in the news these days, were brand new back then, and had never been legally enforced before.Other reviewers note that it can be dry and legal in places, but I personally never found this to be the case, speaking as someone with no knowledge of legal jargon and legalese. The book is well written and Sands manages to join several parallel threads together towards the end of the book, which I felt was masterfully done.Highly recommended!

A well-written book tracing the lives and deaths of the author's relations through the terrors of WW11, as well as chronicalling the rise of key members of the Nazi party and their affects on the towns in Poland where his relatives lived. The last third of the book focusses on the Nuremberg trials.The author is methodical in his unwrapping of that terrible time in the history of Poland, its people and its aggressors.Definitely worth a read for booklovers, historians and anyone wanting to know more about the huge amount of work done by the lawyers, judges and legal teams in bringing the guilty to justice.

Not the most cheerfully titled Xmas present I have ever received. But probably the most powerful and compulsive reading I have experienced in years. Powerful because the subject of establishing international law of crimes against humanity and genocide is so important. Powerful because it recounts the individual first-hand experiences of the principle characters. Powerful because of the sheer scale, sophistication and coldly calculated execution of the crimes. Powerful to me because, although my father was German but not Jewish, he was incarcerated in a reeducation camp in 1933 from which he escaped to the UK. Compulsive reading because it reads like a racy detective story as the international lawyer’s dispute and thrash out new international law. Will the new laws enable the 8 judges – two Soviet, two British, two American and two French – to obtain a conviction at Nuremberg of Hermann Goring, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, plus 11 other leading Nazis?East West Street is a street in Zolkiew , now Ukraine, on one end of which lived Leon Buchholz, Philippe Sands’ grandfathers. At the other end of the street, Hersh Lauterpacht was born. Almost all members of both families were killed during the Holocaust.The book centres on the nearby city of Lviv and on four characters who lived there – Leon, Sand’s grandfather – and two lawyers - Hersh Lauterpacht and Raphael Lemkin who independently became world renowned architects of the Crimes Against Humanity and Genocide now embedded in international law – and Hans Frank who was appointed Governor General of Poland when Hitler divided up Poland with Russia in 1939.Philippe Sands makes the book so compulsive by following individuals – Jewish relatives and family members who died or survived. For example, the extraordinary story of Elsie Tilney of Norwich who, working in the French resistance, travelled to Vienna where Philippe’s desperate grandmother handed a baby, Philippe’s mother, to her to avoid transportation to the death camps. Or the story of Philippe Sands’ investigations with Nicolas Frank, son of the butcher of Poland, who was horrified by the actions of his father who he totally rejected whilst openly acknowledging his ancestry.But at the same time the book brings to life the controversy in framing international law between the two lawyers, Lauterpacht and Lemkin, who came from the same city, studied at the same University but were not acquainted with each other.Lauterpacht put the individual at the heart of the legal order. Up until this point the state was free to act as it wished – discriminate, torture and kill. Article 93 of the Versailles Treaty and even the Polish Minorities Treaty offered no protection for individuals. Sovereignty meant sovereignty, total and absolute. He wanted no mention of genocide or group identity. He feared group identity create a sharp backlash and poorly drafted laws would have unintended consequences.Lemkin, in contrast, argued persistently for the law to encompass genocide – the extermination of racial and religious groups in order to destroy particular races and classes of people and national, racial and religious groups. He believed that just to focus on the individuals was naïve and that it ignored the reality of conflict and violence. He believed the law must reflect true motive and real intent.The debate was fierce. Everyone was fearful of the difficulty of obtaining convictions if these new laws were flawed.The conclusion is the Nuremberg trials and what happened.One overriding experience that Philippe Sands had in his meticulous research for this book was the unwillingness of those who lived through it to talk about it. Exactly the same silence exhibited by my father of his experiences. Herta Rosenblum whose family perished in the holocaust explains: “I decided a very long time ago that this was a period I did not wish to remember. I have not forgotten. I have chosen not to remember.”To demonstrate the impact this book has on me, I am organizing a visit and guided tour to the city at the heart of the story, Lviv in the Ukraine. No other book has inspired that reaction.

An extraordinary book. I have read a great deal about WW2 and parts of the Nuremberg trials but knew very little about the background and the legal implications and consequences - which are still relevant to the times in which we now live. The book is very easy to read, has many of the elements of a detective story and the research involved is awesome. However there is a lot to take in and am about to start reading it for the second time.