EAST WEST STREET
By Philippe Sands
Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 464 pages, £9.99
ISBN 978 1 474 601 917
This is not a Christian book, but it is a volume which should be of great interest to Christians.
The main concern of the book is to tell the story of two Jewish men, Hersch Lauterpacht and Rafael Lemkin, who through separate inputs shaped the framework of law in which the Nuremberg Trials took place after WWII, when Nazi leaders were indicted for war crimes. Interestingly both of them had their origins in the same city in Southern Poland.
Crimes against humanity
Their different approaches to the subject have done much to shape international law down to the present day. Lauterpacht’s approach was to focus on the human rights of the individual – hence the idea of ‘crimes against humanity’. Lemkin’s contribution was to identify the crime of seeking to liquidate a whole race or religious group of people. He more or less invented the term ‘genocide’, but had to fight to get it included in the Nuremberg proceedings. This is both a fascinating and chilling story – especially the testimonies concerning the concentration camps. The prevalent emotion among those who ran Auschwitz was evidently ‘indifference’ – what fallen human beings are capable of!
But part of the story involves a Christian, Elsie Tilney. She has a chapter to herself. She was from Surrey Chapel, Norwich, and was a missionary with a heart to bring the gospel to Jewish people. Her bravery and love in helping Jews is a lovely breath of fresh air amid these very serious pages. We carried something of her story in the July 2013 en.
