The Nazi Legacy Discussed with Philippe Sands

Philippe Sands, a Professor of Law and and Director of the Centre on International Courts and Tribunals at University College London, has recently explored the Nazi-era legacy and the Nuremberg Trials in a documentary movie, What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy, as a screenwriter, and in a book, East West Street.

In the documentary movie Sands interviews two men in their 70s, whose fathers were Nazi war criminals. In the book, he looks at the personal and intellectual evolution of two law scholars, Rafael Lemkin and Hersch Lauterpacht, who independently developed two fundamental concepts of humanitarian law (genocide and crime against humanity – largely used in Nuremberg) after having studied without ever meeting at the same university in Lviv (now Ukraine). Lviv is also the town of origin of Sands' family, almost entirely exterminated by the Nazis, and the place governed by Hans Frank, Hitler's personal lawyer and the overseer of the elimination of more than one million Jews. Sands writes about Frank in the book, while his son is one of the men interviewed in What Our Fathers Did.

Tomorrow Prof. Sands will meet Bocconi students twice. First at 2:30 pm (Aula Manfredini) for a screening of What Our Fathers Did introduced by a speech by Giorgio Sacerdoti, Professor of International Law at Bocconi, and followed by a Q&A session. Then at 6pm (Aula Zappa) for a discussion of his book with Bocconi's Department of Legal Studies professors Marco Ventoruzzo, Paola Mariani and Giorgio Sacerdoti and Garzanti publishing house President Gherardo Colombo.