East West Street: On the Origins of "Genocide" and "Crimes Against Humanity"

by Philippe Sands

By then, the Frank family was pretty much impecunious, gathering food and information about the trial as best it could. More or less estranged from Frank, Brigitte maintained contact with a journalist in Bavaria, a man who offered a summary of the trial each evening on German radio. “My mother listened every night, at seven o’clock,” Niklas recalled. Occasionally, the journalist paid a visit, and sometimes he brought chocolate, a rare treat for the children. He was looking for snippets of information to use on his radio program. Niklas remembered one detail, that the journalist was Jewish: “My mother wrote to my father in the prison. ‘I like this Mr. Gaston Oulman, and would like that you meet each other in the prison.’ ” Niklas chuckled at the crazy idea. “My mother’s letter went on. ‘He is a Jew, but I think he has some heart.’ ” Niklas paused. “She wrote that,” Niklas exclaimed. “Can you imagine, that ‘he has some heart’? The end of the Nuremberg process, from the radio my mother knew all the crimes the Germans had done, yet she was still able to write such a sentence.” He shook his head. “Unbelievable,” he said, before pausing. “It was right that my father should be put on trial.” He was consistent in this view. Yes, when his father took the stand in April, he’d offered an expression of guilt, of sorts. “That was a good thing, but was it genuine?” Niklas had his doubts, confirmed by the change of direction in August. “His true character emerged with that second stateme...