Philippe Sands’ “book “East West Street” was hard to stomach but I couldn’t put it down. Sands traces his family history in today’s Lviv in the Ukraine, yesteryear’s Lemberg in Austria-Hungary. His grandfather’s family has its roots near the city. Like most of Galicia’s Jewish population, it was almost entirely murdered during the holocaust.
Sands investigates how his family’s history intersected with those of Raphael Lemkin and Hersch Lauterpacht, two renowned international lawyers who pioneered the concept of genocide and crimes against humanity, respectively, and who both studied at Lemberg’s university in the 1920s and 1930s. Sands is an international lawyer, too, and has appeared before several tribunals.
I thought I’d put a short post up here as a record of having read this book. Also because Sands appeared on the Ezra Klein Show a few weeks back, where he discussed the question of whether the war in Gaza is a genocide from an international law point of view. Obviously there is a strong and growing consensus from all sorts of scholars that it is. I found this overview helpful. Nonetheless, the issue is by no means uncontentious despite its clear moral case.
It was an illuminating episode. Sands highlighted the challenge of the South African court case against the state of Israel, particularly the question of intent. Interestingly, the court will rule on the Gambia’s case against Myanmar first, elevating the importance of the Rohingya question by potentially setting a precedent involving a sovereign nation as the accused.
Klein got a lot of heat from both sides of the political spectrum for the debate, with some saying that Klein is more than a year late with this debate, and others criticizing him for having it all. I don’t think there is any doubt about the two people’s personal opinions.
Reading Sands’ book has made me to read more about Lemberg. One book I had on my list for a long time was “Lemberg: Die Vergessene Mitte Europas” by my friend Lutz Kleveman.
In it, Lutz recounts the city’s fascinating history during Austria-Hungary’s Habsburg empire, when it was the Eastern center of early twentieth century European, particularly Polish, modernity. Frictions between Poles, Ukrainians and Jews existed but were kept at bay in the multiethnic state. The turbulent interwar years, which saw early pogroms against the Jews, were followed by the terrors of the Second World War.
The book starts off as a wondrous exploration of a long forgotten rich ethnic and intellectual tapestry, becoming almost palpable with some scratching on the surface. But it quickly morphs into a nightmare, and by the end of the book, you almost feel the author’s enthusiasm for the city wane, amidst the monstrosities of the mid-20th century, for which Lemberg was one of the main stages. Hardly any of the city’s Jews, who had not escaped before the Nazis came, survived. Hardly anyone today, it seems, remembers, or worse, even cares.
In addition to providing more context and depth to East West Street, “Lemberg” also helps understand contemporary Ukraine a lot better, and hence also Russia’s war against it. Another important revelation from the book is the extent of the systematic killing of Soviet POWs by the Germans. Red Army POWs in German captivity had a monstrous mortality rate of ca. 60%. One of these POW camps was in the leafy outskirts of Lemberg.
I have known Lutz for more than 20 years, first as a mentor, then as a friend. I started off being his intern when he wrote his first English non-fiction book “The New Great Game” in 2003. He has continued writing books since, and in the early 2010s went on several trips to the West Ukrainian city, culminating in the publication of the Lemberg book in 2017. It is, as all of Lutz’s books, very well written and his reportage style extremely accessible. I couldn’t recommend it more. Alas, it is only available in German and a bunch of other languages, but not in English.
