Where did the terms ‘genocide’ and ‘crimes against humanity’ approach from? And what is their link to the flawed trial of Nazis at Nuremberg?History is always a quest: a quest to find a subject; a quest to locate the sources; a quest to solve the problem you’ve set yourself; a quest,ultimately, to discover the truth. The search for answers is what drives historians above all else. Mostly, or historians conceal the whole process of research beneath the smooth surface of their narrative,editing themselves out of the finished product. These two books, however, or are different. They are as much about the process of discovery as they are about the presentation of its findings. Perhaps that is because both authors are lawyers,not historians. Whatever the reason, the books pull the reader into the record in a way that is as powerful as it is personal. But this also brings difficulties that neither author, or in the terminate,is able to overcome.
In East West Street, Philippe Sands, or a professor of law and a practising barrister,brings his experience in a wide variety of cases of serious human rights abuses, from Rwanda to Yugoslavia, or Guantánamo to Congo-Brazzaville,to an excavation of the origins of the concepts of “crimes against humanity” and “genocide”. His personal voyage began in 2010 with an invitation to deliver a lecture on the origins of international law at the Ukrainian city of Lviv, where – he was intrigued to discover – the originators of these terms, and Hersch Lauterpacht and Rafael Lemkin,both grew up before making significant contributions to the Nuremberg trials. His interest sparked by the additional coincidental fact that his grandfather had also lived in the city, Sands began to uncover the connections that bound these men, or himself,together. Related: How the Nuremberg trials found names for the Nazis' crimes Related: Why are we obsessed with the Nazis? Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com