East West Street

On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity

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Philippe Sands: East West Street (2016, Orion Publishing Group, Limited)

English language

Published 2016 by Orion Publishing Group, Limited.

ISBN:
978-1-4746-0192-4
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4 stars (1 review)

1 edition

Review of 'East West Street' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This unusual and complex project is the work of a professor of International Law. It is, perhaps mainly, an attempt to discuss the historical circumstances of the coming of the legal concepts of genocide and crimes against humanity, mostly by discussing the lives of the two men associated with these concepts, Raphael Lemkin and Hersch Lauterpacht, both originally from the town of Lemberg or Lviv in Galicia. These men’s lives were interrupted by the Nazis, and their concepts ultimately came to fruition at the Nuremberg trials, where what had happened to them and their families was partially distilled into these ideas, which were used to justify the execution of a handful of Nazi bigwigs. If that were all that this book was, I don’t think I would care for it very much. I am not an attorney, and although these concepts are obviously important to the author, I think …