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East West Street
- On the Origins of "Genocide" and "Crimes Against Humanity"
- Narrated by: David Rintoul, Philippe Sands
- Length: 14 hrs and 24 mins
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East West Street
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Publisher's Summary
When human rights lawyer Philippe Sands received an invitation to deliver a lecture in the Western Ukrainian city of Lviv, he began to uncover a series of extraordinary historical coincidences. It set him on a quest that would take him halfway around the world in an exploration of the origins of international law and the pursuit of his own secret family history, beginning and ending with the last day of the Nuremberg Trials.
Part historical detective story, part family history, part legal thriller, Philippe Sands guides us between past and present as several interconnected stories unfold in parallel. The first is the hidden story of two Nuremberg prosecutors who discover, only at the end of the trials, that the man they are prosecuting, once Hitler's personal lawyer, may be responsible for the murder of their entire families in Nazi-occupied Poland, in and around Lviv. The two prosecutors, Hersch Lauterpacht and Rafael Lemkin, were remarkable men whose efforts led to the inclusion of the terms crimes against humanity and genocide in the judgement at Nuremberg, with their different emphasis on the protection of individuals and groups. The defendant was no less compelling a character: Hans Frank, Hitler's personal lawyer, friend of Richard Strauss, collector of paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, and governor-general of Nazi-occupied Poland.
A second strand to the book is more personal, as Sands traces the events that overwhelmed his mother's family in Lviv and Vienna during the Second World War and led his grandfather to leave his wife and daughter behind as war came to Europe. At the heart of this book is an equally personal quest to understand the roots of international law and the concepts that have dominated Sands' work as a lawyer. Eventually he finds unexpected answers to his questions about his family in this powerful meditation on the way memory, crime, and guilt leave scars across generations.
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What listeners say about East West Street
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- andrew
- 2020-05-31
Poles apart
A story of duality, the group or the individual, known or concealed identity, truth and lies, evil and incredible wisdom and love. Mr. Sands wrote this docudrama in the nick of time as many of his sources were remarkably elderly people who would have otherwise taken their secrets with them. The gripping story contains many fortunate coincidences that enabled the dogged Mr. Sands to unravel his family history seemingly from just a few photos and items of memorabilia in his grandparents' Paris apartment. I love the way he compares and contrasts Lemkin and Lauterpacht throughout, lives again riddled with coincidence, until they are finally placed at the same conference after the war. The author's own doubts about the utility of labeling a crime genocide versus crimes of humanity against the individual nicely parallel the two Polish lawyers arguments in favor of each. The use of the author and the excellent David Rintoul as co-narrators works extremely well with Mr. Sands telling the parts related to his fascinating family history and Mr. Rintoul narrating the historical action including the rise of Nazism in middle Europe, the shifting sands of Lemberg/Lviv and eventually the Nuremberg trials. This is an extremely moving narrative with an extraordinary cast of characters such as the amazing Elsie Tilney, Very informative, a great listen.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- lori hamilton
- 2020-09-06
Spectacular listen
Recommended by a coworker and glad I purchased it. Fabulous look into the lives of people during and after the chaos of the war. Led me to look into more that Mr. Sands has to offer to the world both in print and audibly
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- sophia
- 2023-07-18
Wonderful book; however, as a Ukrainian, I have some questions
Overall, this is a brilliant books and the narrators did a great job voicing it. However, the epilogue raises few questions. The author mentioned Ukrainians celebrating SS commanders and Otto von Wachter as he visited Lviv few years ago. That is a blatant lie. I am was born and raised in Lviv, and the nazis are highly condemned and hated there even 75 years after the war ended. What they celebrated, was the fighters of OUN who fought for Ukrainian independence as the notion of freedom poses the highest value to us as a nation today as it did almost a century ago. There is no need to portray us as nazi sympathizers as we are not ones, especially in the light of the current events, when russia uses this narrative to justify the actual genocide of my nation.
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