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

by Philippe Sands

Himmler’s letter offered no ambiguity or escape. When I showed it to Horst, he stared at it, without expression. If his father stood before him now, what would he say? “I don’t really know,” Horst said. “It’s very difficult…maybe I wouldn’t ask him anything at all.” A silence hung around the desolate room. After a while, Horst punctured it with an exonerating thought: his father was overwhelmed by the situation, its inevitability and catastrophic proportion, by the orders and their immediacy. Nothing was inevitable, I suggested to Horst, not the signature, not the oversight he exercised. Wächter could have left. This prompted another long silence, space for the sound of snow and the crackle of burning logs. Faced with such a document, could Horst not condemn the father? Was this a father to love, or was it something else? “I cannot say I love my father,” Horst said. “I love my grandfather.” He looked toward the portrait of the old military man that hangs above his bed. “I have a responsibility for my father in some way, to see what really happened, to tell the truth, and to do what I can do for him.” He reflected out loud. “I have to find some positive aspect.” He had somehow constructed a distinction between his father and the system, between the individual and the group of which he was a leader. “I know that the whole system was criminal and that he was part of it, but I don’t think he was a criminal. He didn’t act like a criminal.” Could his father have walked away from...