Summary:
The literature on the Holocaust is vast and has been
examined from every angle. One might think that nothing more could be written
on the topic or that there could be no new perspectives on this horrific event
that occurred less than 100 years ago. But Philippe Sands would prove you
wrong. In these two linked books, he tells an extraordinary real life story
that combines personal experience and world history into a narrative that is as
powerful as any novel.
East West Street is the first in this unplanned
sequence of books. It recounts how Sands received an invitation to an academic
conference and traveled to Lemberg,
Poland (modern-day Lviv, Ukraine), where his family came from. His seemingly clear-cut
goal was to understand what happened to
his relatives and why his grandfather Leo Buchholz was the only survivor. As he
digs deeper into his family’s tragic story, he learns that two men, Hersch
Lauterpacht and Rafael Lemkin, attended the same university in Lemberg as his
grandfather and at about the same time after World War I. The three men did not know each other and Lauterpacht
and Lemkin are not household names. However, Sands underscores their importance
in coming to grips with the Holocaust and skillfully weaves the two men’s
stories together.
As his grandfather struggled to escape the ravages of the
German occupation of Europe, Lauterpacht
and Lemkin were already thinking about how to punish the Nazis for their wartime
crimes. According to international law before these two men arrived on the legal
scene, state sovereignty was uncontested and leaders could do whatever they wanted to their citizens without fear of
external intervention. Lauterpacht coined the term “crimes against humanity” to
provide an international framework to prosecute the Nazi leaders, and Lemkin devised
the term “genocide” to create a new crime that transcended national
boundaries. Sands describes how these
two vastly different men struggled to get their terms incorporated into the
formal charges against the Nazis by the team of lawyers that represented the
victorious nations at the Nuremberg tribunal. In the course of his
investigation, Sands meets Niklas Frank, the son of Hans Frank, who supervised
the extermination of the Jewish population in Lemberg and the surrounding area
and who was one of the 23 defendants in the Nuremberg trial. Niklas is contrite
and rejects his father because of his monstrous crimes. However, he introduces Sands
to Horst Wachter, the son of Otto Wachter, Hans Frank’s chief deputy, who was primarily
responsible for implementing the Final Solution on the ground.
This is where Ratline picks up the tale. In this sequel, Sands describes in more detail what
happened to his own family, while Otto Wachter climbed higher in the Nazi
hierarchy. Sands describes Wachter’s growing family and his infidelities. He
documents how his wife ignored Otto’s behavior and military activity while
benefiting from all the perks that came her way because of her husband’s efficiently murderous success. Wachter was forced to
run for his life when the war ended and spent almost a year hiding out in the
mountains of central Europe to escape capture. When it appeared safe, he traveled
to Rome to take advantage of the “ratline” of the title to escape and find
refuge in South America. Through the conniving of Vatican officials, American
counterintelligence officers, and others he almost succeeded. But he died in
mysterious circumstances before he could leave Rome. There is an extraordinary and
logic-defying linkage between the families that comes to light because of
Sands’ meticulous detective work, and it rivals anything a screenwriter could
dream up.
View full annotation
