Rabbi Strauchler's Blog

Seventy-six years ago, on Jan. 27, 1945, Soviet troops entered Auschwitz concentration camp, liberating some 7,600 emaciated prisoners. International Holocaust Remembrance Day was established to commemorate this day and was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2005.

I recently read a book entitled East West Street by Philippe Sands. It looks at the personal and intellectual evolution of two men - Hersch Lauterpacht and Raphael Lemkin - who simultaneously originated the ideas of “genocide” and “crimes against humanity,” both of whom, not knowing the other, studied at the same university with the same professors, in the city variously called Lemberg, Lwów, Lvov, or Lviv.

The book probes the difference between these two legal concepts, genocide and crimes against humanity. Lauterpacht put the indictment of “crimes against humanity” – that is, murderous acts by the state against individuals, often enough its own citizens – into the Nuremberg trials. Lemkin's thinking and pressure on the American legal team put the crime of genocide – crimes against a race or group on the basis of their identity – into play at Nuremberg, and in 1948 saw it adopted by the UN General Assembly.

Sands - himself a noted international law expert - sides with Lauterpacht and the "Crimes Against Humanity" definition:

"I have seen for myself how the need to provide the intent to destroy a group in whole or in part, as the Genocide Convention requires, can have unhappy psychological consequences. It enhances the sense of solidarity among the members of the victim group while reinforcing negative feelings towards the perpetrator group. The term ‘genocide’, with its focus on the group, tends to heighten a sense of ‘them’ and ‘us’, burnishes feelings of group identity and may unwittingly give rise to the very conditions that it seeks to address: by pitting one group against another, it makes reconciliation less likely..."

It is interesting to contrast this perspective when it comes to law with Sands' portrayal of his own family story and those of Lauterpacht and Lemkin. He situates identity in the context of formative relationships with others. We do not exist as individuals, but in the context of groups. This perspective was conveyed powerfully by Natan Sharansky recently in an interview with Bari Weiss.

"If you feel you are really alone, as the KGB tried to convince me that I was, you’ll be absolutely powerless. I never felt like a single person. I never felt alone. You feel as if you are in the middle of a historical struggle, one that millions of people are involved in or will be involved in. You feel that there is a deep connection between what they feel and think and what you are doing. And you feel that you are very lucky that history put you in this unique situation. I write in my first book, “Fear No Evil,” about the interconnection of souls. How what you are doing now can be important for people who are not born yet. That’s a very important feeling."