markm reviewed East West Street by Philippe Sands
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 …
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 they are not sufficiently explained in some logical legal context, and their discussion becomes tedious. After a while it just becomes an account of Lemkin’s and Lauterpacht’s maneuvers to get their idea used at the trial. But, the book is also several other things; it is a fascinating detective story describing the author’s search for facts about his own maternal grandfather’s life; it is a biography of Hans Frank, the Governor-General of the General Government (the part of occupied Poland that had not been absorbed by Germany), and a man intimately associated with the destruction of these men’s families; it is a behind the scenes view of what went on among the judges and prosecutors at Nuremberg; and, since the author leaves no stone unturned, it is also his captivating accounts of interviews with survivors and relatives of all of these people.