Words matter, deeply. War crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide: these terms warrant proper explanation. Philippe Sands delves into his family’s past and the biographies of legal luminaries in an amalgam of historical detail, connections, coincidences and legal conundrums as he traces the evolution of international law from post-World War2 victor’s justice to a more holistic construct in its protection of human rights.The thread linking these elements runs through Lviv, in the Ukraine, and the neighbouring town of Zólkiew. The ashes of World War 1 seeded this area of eastern Poland, a tinderbox for the rise of anti-Semitism and ethnic violence. It was also the formative environment for the intellects around which Sands centres the book, Hersch Lauterpacht and Raphael Lemkin.These two legal pioneers had roots in the same area, trained at the University of Lemberg, and were affected awfully by events leading up to 1939, and the Holocaust . They were heroes of the same humanitarian...
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