G WS

I wanted to share with you a remarkable and meticulously researched book that I have just completed. The title is “East West Street” and is written by the international human rights lawyer Philippe Sands. The book explores the origins and development of the legal concepts of “genocide” and “crimes against humanity.” It sounds weighty, but it is not. It is told through the personal stories of two men, Hersch Lauterpacht, who fled Nazi Europe to become a Professor of International law at Cambridge and a judge at the International Court of Justice; and, Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent, who coined the word “genocide,” and who made his way to the US via Sweden to become an academic publishing a work that provided the foundation for the inclusion of genocide as a crime at the Nurumberg trials. The author also weaves into this a personal story of his grandfather Leon and his extended family and their stories through the Holocaust and the atrocities implemented by Hans Frank and Otto Von Wächter. (Ironically, Philippe Sands and Frank's journalist son Niklas, are now friends and are the subject of a documentary, “My Nazi Legacy,” which can be seen on You Tube.) The link for all these stories, that read more like a detective novel, than a scholarly text, is the small city of Lviv in Ukraine. The city changed hands eight times last century and was known at different times as: Lemberg, Lwow, Lvov, or currently Lviv. Incredibly, Leon and Lauterpacht lived on the same street (East West Street) and Lemkin a few streets away throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. Whether the three ever knew each other or met is unknown, however Lauterpacht and Lemkin studied at the University of Lviv at much the same time. The whole story is brought to life as an engrossing family memoir, through Sands' vivid and descriptive writing. I am sure your local library, if it does not hold a copy, would obtain one. I am sure you would be as riveted to this work as I was.