East West Street

Philippe Sands' "East West Street: On the Origins of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity" is a remarkable work that weaves together personal family history, legal history, and the story of the Nuremberg trials into a single compelling narrative. Sands, an international lawyer by profession, uses his own family's connection to the city of Lviv—known at various points in history as Lemberg, Lwów, and Lvov—as a thread to explore how two of the most important legal concepts of the twentieth century came into being.

The book centers on four men whose lives intersected in and around this one city in Eastern Europe. Sands' own grandfather, Leon Buchholz, was born there. Hersch Lauterpacht and Raphael Lemkin, two legal scholars who each studied law at the same university in Lviv, went on to develop the concepts that would eventually be used to prosecute Nazi war criminals: Lauterpacht argued for the idea of "crimes against humanity," while Lemkin coined and championed the term "genocide." The fourth figure is Hans Frank, the Nazi governor-general of occupied Poland, whose trial at Nuremberg forms a dramatic climax to the book and whose actions directly affected the fates of the other three men's families.

What makes this book particularly effective is how Sands refuses to treat legal history as an abstract or purely intellectual matter. Instead, he grounds these ideas in the lived experiences of the people who created them and the families who suffered under the crimes these legal frameworks were designed to address. The reader learns not only about the theoretical differences between Lauterpacht's and Lemkin's approaches—one focused on the rights of individuals, the other on the protection of groups—but also about the personal losses each man experienced, having had family members murdered in the Holocaust in the very region where they were born and educated.

Sands' own investigative journey adds another layer to the narrative. As he traces his grandfather's life, piecing together fragments of a story that had been largely hidden or forgotten, the book takes on the quality of a detective story. This personal quest gives the book its emotional core, even as it moves between courtrooms in Nuremberg, archives in various European cities, and the streets of Lviv itself, a city that has changed hands and names so many times over the past century.

The portrayal of Hans Frank is handled with particular skill. Sands does not simply present him as a monstrous caricature but instead explores the complexity of a man who was cultured and educated, yet responsible for immense suffering. This nuanced treatment extends to Frank's own son, whom Sands interviewed, adding a further dimension to the book's exploration of how the legacy of these crimes continues to affect subsequent generations.

The structure of the book, moving between different time periods and different characters, could have easily become confusing, but Sands manages the transitions skillfully. Each thread of the narrative informs the others, and by the time the various strands converge at Nuremberg, the reader has a rich understanding of not just the legal concepts being debated in that courtroom, but the deeply personal stakes involved for the men who helped shape them.

This is a book that manages to be both intellectually rigorous and deeply moving. It offers valuable insight into how international law developed in response to atrocity, while never losing sight of the human cost that made such legal innovation necessary. The writing is clear and accessible, making complex legal history understandable to readers without a legal background, while still offering enough depth to satisfy those with more specialized knowledge.

"East West Street" stands as an important contribution to understanding both the Holocaust and the development of international law. It serves as a reminder that legal concepts we now take for granted, such as genocide and crimes against humanity, were once radical ideas that had to be argued for and defended, often by people who had personal reasons to understand the urgent need for such protections. This book is highly recommended for anyone interested in history, law, or the ways in which personal and political histories intertwine.