by Marc Mangel University of California, Santa Cruz
This is a magnificient and compelling book. In it, Philippe Sands -- a reknowned environmental and human rights lawyer -- deftly weaves a personal story of his grandfather and a professional story of the creation of modern international law via the Nuremberg trial after World War II.
Sands's grandfather, Leon Bucholz, was a survivor of the Shoah and died in 1997 at the age of 94. He was born in Lvov/Lemberg/Lwow/Lviv (the place is the same, the name varies according to who controls it [Soviets, Germans, Poles, Ukranians respectively]), moved to and married in Vienna in 1937, and fled to Paris -- where he remained the rest of this life - in 1939. Like many survivors, Leon was silent about those events until his death. The personal story is the fabulous detective work that Sands did in reconstructing the history of Leon and his family, particularly Sands's mother, Leon's daughter Ruth whose own story of survival is quite extraordinary. Our ancestors ultimately cannot hide secrets from us, but many are well hidden and require much work to be revealed.
The professional story begins in 2010, when Sands received an invitation to lecture at the law school in Lviv and in preparing for that lecture learned about the connections of Lviv to international law. More specifically, it involves the lives of Hersch Lauterpacht, Rafael Lemkin, and Hans Frank. Lauterpacht and Lemkin respectively introduced the phrases 'crimes against humanity' and 'genocide' into international law; these were adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1946 in two sequential resolutions that provide the basis for the International Criminal Court, although that took 50 years to come into existence. Lauterpacht also authored the magnificient An International Bill of the Rights of Man in the midst of World War II. Frank was one of the top lawyers for Adolph Hitler and head of the General Government in Nazi-occupied Poland during the murder of 2,500,000 people (mainly Jews and Poles).
The lives of these four men intersect in both expected and unexpected ways. Leon and Lauterpacht grew up at opposite ends of the same street -- East West Street -- in Lvov. Lemkin and Lauterpacht battled for the minds of their colleagues about the best way to protect people from crimes of their government upon them. Both believed that the law could do good and protect people and both agreed on the value of a single life and the importance of being part of a community but they differed on whether one should protect individuals or the group. Both Lemkin and Lauterpacht played roles in the Nuremberg prosecutions that lead to the hanging of Frank and 11 other top Nazis. Sands has no idea what his grandfather thought of the trial and judgment, but does report that Leon prayed every morning to give a sense of "belonging to a group that had disappeared". Leon was also delighted in Sands's choice of career in the law. In weaving the personal and professional stories together so seamlessly -- rather than publishing two separate books -- Sands has created a masterpiece.
The battle between the ideas of Lauterpacht and Lemberg is brilliantly explained by Sands. Simply put, is it better to protect individuals by starting with the recognition that every individual has the same rights or by protecting groups. The danger of protecting groups, of course, is that it immediately creates an 'us' and 'them' mentality which itself can lead to the persecution of groups.
Frank's son Niklas, born in 1939, plays an important role in this book, as he did in Sands's marvelous documentary, What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy , providing Sands with both a sounding board and seeking his own insights about how his father, an educated man (a lawyer no less), could behave so grotesquely.
The starting point of this book is the rampant and institutional anti-semitism in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century. As I write this, liberal democracies everywhere are threatened by right-wing populism and in the US we have seen vitriolic anti-semitism rise in course of the presidential primaries. It is a separate question, of course, about the origins of group hatred, but worth pondering in general (which Sands briefly touches) and anti-semitism in particular. Lord Jonathan Sacks, in his book Future Tense argues that Jews are messengers of tolerating diversity -- that there are many ways to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives (both material and spiritual) -- and this is something autocrats (both material and spiritual) cannot tolerate.
Sands's telling of Leon's story will help many children and grandchildren of survivors of the Shoah better understand their own parent or grandparent. The story of Lauterpacht, Lemkin, and Frank -- and our own times -- are reminder of how thin the veneer of civilization is and how vigilant we must be to protect it and the weak and powerless. It should be read by everyone.